Spot A Bad Guy In A Crowd In Less Than 60 Seconds
And you don’t have to be a combat Marine
There is no doubt that in this day and age personal security is a high priority on your preparedness list. We can comb the headlines and see story after story of terrorist attacks, church shootings, robberies, and murders.
Like many of you, I practice with my weapons. I send several hundred rounds downrange each week; no responsible gun owner wouldn’t be proficient with his weapon.
This got me to thinking, though. I spend a lot of time SHOOTING, but I haven’t spent much time learning WHAT TO SHOOT!
I realize if a bad guy is gunning people down then the target is clear – this is what’s known as RIGHT OF BANG.
Think of a timeline, with Bang being the event. IED, active shooter, mugging, or any other dangerous event. That’s bang. On a timeline, anything happening BEFORE bang is “Left of Bang”, and anything occurring AFTER bang is “Right of Bang”. Traditional military and police training usually focus on right of bang.
But in a fight, whoever attacks first as a HUGE advantage, and often wins!
It was sometime around 2009 that Gen. James Mattis (you may have heard of him) ordered a program created to help Marines on the ground notice and discover attackers BEFORE they struck.
On Gen. Mattis’ orders experts, both civilian and military, from psychologists to expert big game hunters to develop the Marine Corps Combat Hunter program.
You can learn to read people! Easily determine who’s a threat.
In it we learn that human animal still exhibits kinetic behaviors based upon the “Fight, Flight, or Freeze” instinct. We all do it every day. We can act in one of several domains:
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Dominant/Submissive. Humans may appear to take up more room in a space when acting dominant. They may lean back and extend their legs, or they may lean towards another person. Conversely, acting submissive a person will attempt to take up less space. They may cross their legs beneath their chair, or hunch.
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Comfortable/Uncomfortable. In any given situation, people will behave certain ways if they’re comfortable. They may cross their arms behind their head. Uncomfortable people will show it. They may cross their arms, subconsciously attempting to protect themselves.
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Interested/Uninterested. Humans can’t really multi-task. If someone is only pretending to do a task, but really doing something else (like observing a possible target) the primary task will suffer. It will be noticeable. Notice what people are interested or disinterested in within context of what’s going on.
Any anomaly from one of these domains isn’t in itself enough to warrant scrutiny, a general rule is if there is a flag in 3 of them watch out for that guy! And of course these are only a few examples. I advise you to get the Book to learn for yourself.
There are other domains as well, beyond the kinetic (actions a person takes).
There are proxemic signs. These describe how people interact. Humans will naturally be drawn to sources of pleasure, and be naturally repelled by dangerous things.
There are geographic concerns. Humans (and animals) will always follow the Natural Lines of Drift (NLD). These are pathways through areas. They may be goat trails in Afghanistan, or pathways through urban cities. The locals will know them. And use them. If they aren’t using a NLD, there may be something wrong.
All of this and more can be learned in the pages of Left of Bang.
