Self Defense 101: Think Like a Bad Guy

Once upon a time, I had a sit-down with the infamous John Riddle to talk about situational awareness. In that talk, he suggested a drill that will make anybody who does it a less attractive target to most bad guys. I’ve mentioned it before in a few places, and you can see it in other sources, too:

Go out in public. Pretend you’re a bad guy. Look for people you, as a bad guy, would choose as your victim. Think about what the people you choose have in common with their body language, clothing, size, demeanor, and any other aspects…then stop doing those things.

It’s a great drill, but only part of the equation because it ignores the fact that different predators seek out different prey. In our interview, Rory Miller told me about ways this applies to self-defense, and we’ll get to that in a moment, but first…

Consider the Humble House Cat

This is what I mean when I say different predators seek out different prey. A host of studies have found that house cats are the deadliest hunters in the world, in terms of how often they kill, how many different species they kill, and how frequently they kill without eating their victims. Cats are incredibly dangerous predators…if you’re smaller than them. They’re no danger whatsoever to a human, or a dog, or even large birds and rodents. Raccoons and opossums can generally kick the crap out of them.

See also spiders, bears, mountain lions, and bats. Each are profoundly dangerous to some prey animals, and completely harmless to others. Or look at sharks. They’re the apex predator of the ocean, but mountain goats never have to spare them a thought.

Different predators go after different prey.

Now, Consider Ted Bundy

Generally, I think we should forget serial killers, spree shooters, terrorists, and other “people” of that ilk. Fame is part of what they want from what they do, and we shouldn’t give it to them. That said, sometimes we can learn from what they unintentionally teach us. For example, this photo array of some of Bundy’s victims.

Bundy killed somewhere between 20 and 30 women, and he killed most of them through an evil combination of preparation, cunning, and deceit. He was a very dangerous killer, but from the photos above you can see that he wasn’t dangerous to men, or to children, or even to women who didn’t fit a very specific physical profile.

Different predators have different victims.

Well Okay, So What?

The title of this blog post is “Think Like a Bad Guy”, and we started by mentioning a drill that puts you in that mind. Your next step is to think like the bad guys who might target you. Based on your size, shape, demeanor, location, and bearing, you are the preferred target of…somebody.

For example. I’m 200 pounds of aging jock with a lot of martial arts training, who dresses like I have about five bucks to spend on his wardrobe each month. Very, very few predators are going to look at me and say “Oh, boy! There’s lunch.” However, I am a solid target for three kinds of bad guys:

• Aggressive panhandlers, who are confident I won’t just beat them up…and who think they can play on that alpha male pride bullshit to shame me into handing them a few bucks. Especially in front of kids or a woman (they don’t know if she’s a wife, girlfriend, or date), because I won’t want to look cheap.

• Muggers when I’m traveling abroad, because Americans are impossibly wealthy from their perspective, and they know I’m not flying back into town to testify after my vacation is over.

• Women in bars looking to roll a drunk (and their male accomplices), who think they can play on that aging part of “aging jock” and lead me astray with thoughts of “old man’s still got it.”

That’s about it. Sure, there are situations I could create or wander into that bring other predators out, but really those are the predators I need to worry about. Having identified them, I develop plans for each one.

• When alone, I just don’t engage with aggressive panhandlers. No eye contact, keep moving. I’ve never had one touch me where the right eye contact didn’t end the interaction immediately.

• As to my kids and aggressive panhandlers: I have a rule. If you’re trying, you get paid: sell flowers or oranges, play guitar, tell me a joke, wash my windows, whatever. If you’re trying, you get paid. If not, you don’t. My kids know my rule, so I’m never in fear that they’ll think I’m cheap or unempathetic in that situation.

• I have a long list of safety practices I use when travelling. Stay tuned for a full post series, and probably a book, about them. But they start with a dummy wallet packed with low-denomination bills of local currency. In most places I like to go, even $10 worth seems like a full wallet. I hand it off and we all go about our business.

• Getting tricked by a criminally-minded lass is off the table for me because when I’m married, I’m married. That’s it.

Now It’s Your Turn

Based on your size, gender, appearance, demeanor, ability, mobility, visible wealth, and all the other aspects that somebody can tell about you with a one-minute scan…who’s likely to target you? Who’s likely to target your kids?

Make a list, then come up with (or ask an expert about) the best ways to deal with each threat. This is some of the best thinking and learning you can do for your safety and the safety of your family.

About That Shark

I wanted to mention an important hint from that shark again. Mountain goats are probably delicious, and sharks would very likely eat them with great pleasure….but mountain goats don’t have to worry because they don’t go anywhere near the ocean.

One of the best lines of defense against any kind of bad guy/predator is to think about where those bad guys tend to be…then simply be someplace else.

Rory talks more about that specific aspect in our conversation, so check it out if you haven’t already.

3 Situational Awareness Games to Play With Your Kids

I have at least one other blog post and several videos on the YouTube channel about the importance of situational awareness…but situational awareness comes at a risk.

If you practice awareness (or teach your kids awareness) from an operational standpoint, listening to Navy SEALS, veteran cops, and similar high-speed, low-drag combat types, you’re going to exhaust yourself. The “head on a swivel” tactical meerkat approach to paying attention is appropriate to people with missions, who can then go off duty when they get back to base, or clock out at end of shift.

It doesn’t work so well for parents, because our mission lasts (at least ) 18 consecutive years. And if we build the habit of that kind of situational awareness in our kids, we’re setting them up for a scary and fatiguing life.

If Not That, Then What? What Kind of Awareness Keeps Us Safe?

I was lucky enough to interview the inimitable Dawn Armstrong, who teaches exactly this for a living. She says the key is to make awareness not a mission priority, but a simple habit…and to make sure you’re not on high alert finding baddies in every corner, but rather mindful and curious about the world. This accomplishes two important things:

1. It sets up your awareness as a way to spot not just the bad, but the beautiful, inspiring, and hilarious.

2. It makes paying closer attention subconscious, and less of a drain on your mental and emotional resources.

Dawn also went on to talk with me about some games and activities you can play with your kids to help them internalize those habits of awareness and curiosity without scaring the pants off of them. Here are three of my favorites.

Look Three Ways

You’re already teaching your kids 2/3s of this one:

Look both ways before you cross the street.

You’ve known it long enough that you do it automatically, whether you’re crossing that street on foot, on your bike, or while driving. It’s second nature to you.

Now, add a third pass. As you approach the street, glance to the left, then to the right (or right, then left if you’re in England or some other place they drive on the other side of the road), looking for traffic. Before you step out, go back to your right, this time scanning for anything else that grabs your attention.

This third pass looks for people on the other side of the street, cool murals on nearby buildings, and adorable stray cats who need emergency petting. You’ll be surprised how quickly you and your kids can make this automatic, and by how much more interesting it makes your world.

The Add-On Game

Choose a person, building, or object your family encounters on your regular day.

The first person to play describes that person using one adjective or descriptive noun. “A man.”

The next person to play adds one point to the description. “A tall man.”

The next person to play adds another point. “A tall man older than mom.”

Keep going, rotating through your family, until somebody can’t come up with anything. After some practice, you’ll end up with something like “A tall, thin man older than mom wearing a red shirt, blue jeans, running shoes, and a baseball cap. He had a beard, but no mustache.”

As you first introduce this game, do it for something that stays in your field of vision, for reference. After your family has got it more or less figured out, you can do it for stuff already in your rearview.

You can also practice this game on your own. Look at each person you pass while you walk, and describe them to yourself with one or two key elements like red shirt or long hair.

Exits, Mate?

This one is pretty popular among operators I know, though again I can’t stress enough how inappropriate that kind of awareness is for parents and kids. Still, this one’s fun and builds another of those “awareness and curiosity” habits. It goes like this.

When you sit down at a restaurant, or have an idle moment in a store, have your kids close their eyes, then ask them where the exits are. Have the youngest point to the main exit, and older kids describe or point to a secondary way out of the place.

Knowing how to get out of any room you enter is important safety information, but it’s also a way to build curiosity and knowledge about architecture and building design.

Pro tip: if you’re in a restaurant, there’s always an exit through the kitchen. Keep that one in your back pocket so you can impress your kids if you get stumped with this game.

Teach Through Games

Games are one of the best ways to teach kids anything. They learn things faster and retain it longer when they learn through play, than in formal teaching settings or a lecture at the dinner table.

I’d bet real money you can come up with a dozen more after reading the examples above. If you’d like further inspiration, check out Dawn’s interview below:

Tactical meercat courtesy of randy-henderson.com

Expert Secret: Have a "No Go" Line for Family Travel

Here’s an important fact about family safety, especially family travel safety, we all need to keep in mind:

When you make the plan, sitting comfortably at home at the table with a beverage nearby, safe and warm, you are smarter than you implementing the plan in the field.

Think about the last time you were in full family vacation mode. You were tired. You were a little confused. The kids had been clamoring for attention/trying to get themselves killed/asking for money for a few hours. You were probably dehydrated. You might have had your “dad goggles” on, where you focus on a short term goal even though nothing but that desire suggests it’s really all that important.

There’s no real replacement for information on the ground, and sometimes we find the reality of a situation is so different from what we thought it would be that we have to change the plan. Most of the time, though, if we did our planning well, that’s not the case.

This is especially important when things start to go wrong, because travelling parents often end up in the following cycle:

• Step One: Start with a plan for the day/afternoon/location

• Step Two: Things start out all right

• Step Three: A small thing goes wrong

• Step Four: That small thing begins to cascade into either multiple small things or a big thing

• Step Five: Because we’ve already mentally committed to the plan, we keep moving forward instead of stopping to reasses

• Step Six: At best, we all have less of a good time than we could have. At worst, somebody gets hurt.

In my interview with travel safety coach Dr. Andrea Leschak, she talked about one of her own experiences on a scuba expedition, and how her life was endangered because she didn’t pull the plug when she should have. She was travelling without kids, doing something she’s an expert at, so she was able to get out of it intact, but it illustrates the point: the importance of a No-Go Line.

No-Go Line Basics

A no-go line is exactly what it sounds like. Before you set off, either at home prior to leaving or in the morning before the day’s events, you think deeply about the activity you’re going to do. Look for places things could get sketchy. Based on that thought (and any research you need to do), you set up an “If A, then B” statement, where B is always either aborting or significantly changing your plan.

For example:

• Going on a desert hike, “If we get to less than a pint of water each, we turn around and go back.”

• Swimming at the beach, “If the tide gets above that line of rocks, we pack it in and go home.”

• Going dancing while visiting a town you don’t know well, “If we see more than one young man drunk, we go home immediately".”

• Visiting an amusement park in the middle of summer, “If anybody looks dehydrated, we find shade and rest for half an hour.”

You get the idea. A no-go line helps you set the rules for your trip while you’re still in your right mind.

The Problem With a No-Go Line

No-go lines are an excellent tool for family travel safety, but they have one serious flaw. They only work if you respect them.

Take the desert hike example from above. When you reach that point where your group has less than a pint of water each, it will be tempting to say “But it’s only another two miles! We’ve got this!” But remember in that situation that your planning self was smarter than your executing self. Trust your no-go line and respect it.

This is a simple concept to understand, and easy enough to practice at the planning stages. It’s harder to implement in the moment, but hey…we’re parents. We had to turn in our “do stupid things” license the moment our first baby met the world.

If you haven’t yet, take some time to watch my full interview with Andrea. The no-go line was just one of many really great ideas she had for us.

Let's Talk About Hotel Safety

“What you don’t know about your hotel can kill you.”

Not really (most of the time). I’m just riffing off those old scare pieces from the network nightly news. But seriously folks, hotels can be zones of false safety. They’re “home” while we’re away, a place where we feel like we can let down our guard.

And we can let down our guard, but if we take a few steps we can let down our guard more safely…which means better rest for us, and safer days on our trip. 

I learned a lot of his in two books very much worth checking out. These are How to Be Your Own Bodyguard by Nick Hughes, and Choose Adventure: Safe Travel in Dangerous Places by Greg Ellifiritz. They’re densely packed with good information, much of which matches my own experience traveling in places like Guatemala, Cambodia, and India. Both are available on Amazon.

We can be safer in hotels by dividing our work into three stages: what to do at home, what to do when we check in, and what to do while we’re there. 

At Home:

• Don’t skimp on the hotel price. Get a good hotel in a decent neighborhood, preferably one with a pool and an in-room kitchen. 

• Ask for a room on the 3rd to 8th floor. Lower is a target for burglary. Higher is out of reach for most fire ladders. 

• Use Google Maps (satellite view) to check out the neighborhood around the hotel. You can see a lot of red and green flags by doing this.

Checking In:

• Confirm that they gave you a room on the floors you requested. 

• Identify a manager by name, and introduce them to your kids. Make sure your children know to go to or ask for this person if they need help and can’t find you. 

• If the receptionist says your room number out loud, ask for a new room. 

While You’re There:

• Shortly after settling in to your room, walk as a group through the fire escape route. Learn it, and confirm the way isn’t blocked or locked. 

• Set up your emergency equipment someplace you can reach it easily.

• In any country where you don’t feel 100% safe, bring a 3-dollar rubber door stop. Kick it into the door when you lock in for the night. 

• Avoid sending any sensitive information on the hotel wi-fi. It is almost never secure. 

Greg’s Blog is a great source of safety information of all stripes, written by a smart and experienced human being doing good things in the world. Check it out here. 

A related habit I’ve found works very well is what I call the two-day travel day. Get up early, before it’s hot, and go do a thing in your destination. Come “home” to the hotel in the early afternoon and rest for 2-4 hours. Nap, use the pool, let the kids play video games, whatever. Then go out in the afternoon to evening for a second round of travel experiences. Have dinner, come back to the hotel, and go to bed. It really is the better way to travel, and travel safely. 

BOOK EXCERPT: GOLDEN RULE #3 - LIVE BY EXAMPLE

On the first Monday of the month for a while I’ll post a chapter from the book. If you love what you see here, you can get 100 more very much like it by picking the book up on Amazon.

Here’s a frustrating fact about parenting. Our kids don’t listen much, but they are always watching. It’s frustrating because that’s how they catch us when we don’t walk our talk.

I grew up in the 1980s, during which time there was a famous public service commercials on television about not using drugs. It featured a heated exchange between father and son. When the father asked “Where did you learn to do this?” about the son’s drug use, the son replied “I learned it from watching you!”

The ad’s a bit over the top, but that message applies to so much more than drugs. How your child wears a seatbelt in the car, they learn by watching what you do with your seatbelt. How your child thinks and talks about school, they learn from watching how you talk about your education and theirs. How they treat their romantic partners, how often they tell the truth, whether or not they text while driving. Whether they wear a helmet while riding a bike.

All of it, they learn by watching you.

Which means it’s our job as parents to live by example, demonstrating the safety habits and practicing the techniques we think are important. First they see us do it, then they help us do it. Eventually they’ll remind us to do it…and as adults, they’ll teach the same things to our grandchildren.

The Next Level

When I work with clients or present at events, the biggest questions I get asked is how to talk to kids about safety without scaring them.

I understand the worry. Many parents fear that discussing potential dangers will plant the idea of those dangers in a little one’s mind. I’ll go into that in more detail later, but for now…

When our kids see us,  looking both ways when crossing the street, at first they don’t think about it at all. Later on they might ask about it. When we tell them we do that so we’re safer from being hit by a car, one of two things happens. In one case, they’ve already been exposed to the idea of that danger, and you give them a new tool to help prevent it. In the other, this is the first time they’ve thought about the risk of being hit by a car, and their first exposure to this potentially scary idea comes with the knowledge that you are already doing something about it, and teaching them a way to be safer, too.

That seems to me less scary and more empowering than any other way to discuss safety with our kids.