As I mentioned, Situational Awareness is the most important survival skill you can have.  Whether you own this skill or could use some help building it, here are some things you can do to practice situational awareness.  Pick the ones that work for you and practice them as much as you can.

• The best way that I can think of to practice this skill is using the Coopers Color Code any and every time you are away from your home.

• If you are attacked, it will often come from behind you.  Check your six, or look behind you frequently.  This is a hard one to get used to, partly because there can be so much to scan in front of you, that looking behind you just doesn’t occur to you.   Think of how often you are supposed to check your mirrors while driving; every 5-8 seconds is recommended.  Since walking is a much slower pace, I think checking your six every 30 seconds is sufficient.  I walk maybe 100 yards in the parking garage at work and I often check my six twice.

• When you are in public, do not use your smartphone or text-message, if at all possible.  There have been muggings where the smartphone was violently taken.  If you are paying attention to your screen, you are not paying attention to your surroundings.

• When you’re in public and having a conversation, keep your eyes moving at all times.  It’s easy to become hyper-focused on a conversation.  I worked security at a local high school and watched a teenage boy who was involved in a conversation, walk into oncoming traffic and get hit by a car.  In shock, he got up and tried to walk away, we stopped him and called an ambulance.  I wonder if he learned as much as I did from the experience.

• It’s easy to get sucked into what you’re doing at work.  Because workplace violence is so prevalent, I try to listen to what is going on around me, especially when there is a sound that doesn’t fit.  Just because I have seen this person every work day for the last five years, doesn’t mean that he isn’t capable of violence in the work place.

• When we go out to eat, I prefer to have my back to a wall, and always sit facing the door.  I continuously scan the room and everyone that comes in the door. 

• When you go somewhere, pay attention to the way you’re going.  Notice alternate exits and keep track of the fastest way out.  This will help ensure that you know how to get back the way you came and give you the closest exit in the event of an emergency of any kind.

• There is a phrase in the Navy that I’ll never forget, “Keep your head on a swivel”.  I worked the flight deck at night for two cruises in the Persian Gulf.  It’s often been rated as one of the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the world and for good reason.  There are literally dozens of things that could kill or maim you on all sides, including above and below.  You can’t focus on one thing for long.  You have to keep looking around to make sure nothing is headed your direction.  I’ve been out of the Navy a long time.  Even though I’m not on the flight deck anymore, I still try to keep my head on a swivel.

• Look up and down; make sure you are looking up for possible dangers as well as down.  I once read on a forum about a man who climbed up a tree on a fairly popular hiking path.  His feet were a few feet above people’s heads.  He said he was up there for a good while and not one person noticed him.  I have no proof but I think most people look mostly at things at their eye level, unless something obvious draws their attention somewhere else.

• As I mentioned in the article I wrote on Situational Awareness, your gut or intuition or even the Holy Spirit can alert you.  You might not even be conscious of why you’re on alert.  Women have a much easier time with this than us guys.  Pay attention to your gut; if you have a feeling that you should take an alternate route home, do it. 

• If you have an uneasy feeling about someone that just walked into your business or church, keep an eye on them.  Trust your gut.

If you have any other tips please bless everyone with mentioning them in the comments.

 
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Situational awareness is the most important skillset when it comes to your safety.  By practicing situational awareness, you can avoid being in dangerous situations, possibly involving another person, unsafe driving conditions or any number of other things. 

I define situational awareness as the ability to take in information about those around you, your surroundings as well self-analysis, interpret that information and act accordingly to your current situation.  To fully develop this I’ll briefly explore the tree aspects of situational awareness.

Awareness of Those Around You

Coopers Color Code is absolutely a part of situational awareness.  To be fully aware of any given situation you need to be aware of more than just whether or not someone an immediate threat to you.  For instance, let’s say you are in a room with twelve other people.  You are in Condition Yellow of Coopers Color Code and have assessed that no one is an immediate threat to your safety.  If you take in the entire situation, you might notice that the gentleman a few seats away on your left is sweating and rubbing his left arm.  You might also notice that the couple to your right is having an argument, albeit a quiet argument, but an argument nonetheless.

You can learn a lot from just watching people. They often tell you things they wouldn’t say with their mouths.  In fact I think more people tell the truth with their actions than they do with their lips.  This by itself isn’t enough to be fully aware; it is just one piece of the puzzle.

Awareness of Your Surroundings

Being aware of your surroundings means not only paying attention to what you see but often what you don’t, comparing what is normal to what you have in front of you and assessing it and looking for things that are irregular. 

Here is an example of something standing out from what you are used to seeing.  You often stop at McDonalds for coffee at 6:00 am.  There are a few cars in the parking lot, lights on inside and you can see the employees working.  If, one morning, you pull up and there are cars in the lot but there are no lights on and no one answers the drive-thru, the differences should be setting off some alarm bells.

Here is an example of something you might not see often but that you have to assess, depending on what you believe to be normal; you are finishing up your Christmas shopping at a popular mall and notice a backpack that is sitting on the floor, partially hidden, with no one near it.  This is abnormal as you would normally expect to see people near the bag.

Awareness of Self

We’re all aware of what mood we’re in or how we feel about something, but sometimes we might not know why.  For instance, there have been times when I’ve met someone and almost instantly wanted to punch them in the mouth.  Does it make sense?  No, not really.  Should I feel that way?  No, probably not.  Should I pay attention to it?  Absolutely, yes!  I’m not easily angered, so when someone does anger me, I immediately go to Condition Orange and pay close attention to them.

There are often things that our subconscious picks up on that we often don’t “see” right away, if at all. Call it intuition, your gut or the Holy Spirit, but when something inside starts sounding alarms do not silence them with logic. I think women have an easier time with this.  Men can feel shame when feelings of fear, anger or other “bad” emotions come to the surface, so we ignore or explain them away.

Sometimes awareness of one of these is enough to get you to take action, sometimes it could take more.  The more you practice situational awareness, the easier it will become to notice things that would normally have gone unnoticed.  If you think you could use some help increasing your situational awareness I will share some tips on Friday.

 
Here are several ways you canTrain Situational Awareness.
 

This week I am going to cover some different types of awareness. You might be thinking; “What does this have to do with preparedness?” My answer is simple; everything. 

Proverbs 27:12:

“A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.”

You can’t avoid the danger if you aren’t aware of it and you can’t be aware of it if you’re not watching for it.  This is a skillset that I developed young.  I was horribly picked on from grade one though grade nine.  I learned that being unaware got my books dumped, got me punched or found me as the target of some other torment. This is a skillset some people are born with and others have to learn.  The information I am going to cover this week is important, especially for my female readers. 

Today I am going to talk about the Cooper Color Code, which was developed by Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC.  Col. Cooper was one of America’s premier firearms instructors, forming the American Pistol Institute.  There have been many variants and this will be my take of the Cooper Color Code.

Condition White

White is the lowest level of awareness.  This is the level you are at when at home and relaxed.  If you are in Condition White out in public, you may be startled by someone as they pass in the grocery store or cut someone off in traffic and not realize it until they’re in your rearview mirror being unfriendly in your general direction.

Condition Yellow

In condition yellow you are relaxed but fully aware of your surroundings.  This is the place where you spend most of your day.  There are no specific threats but you are aware that there could be and you are scanning for them.  I think of it like the Terminator movies; the Terminator would scan every person or target it came into contact with.  If the target was deemed safe, it stayed at Condition Yellow and moved to the next target.  If the target was deemed a possible threat, the Terminator continued to scan the same threat or moved to Condition Orange.

Condition Orange

In condition orange, your mindset changes from relaxed and aware to “I may have to defend myself”.  You are focused on a single target and continue to scan others to see if they mean to do you harm.   You also draw a mental line in the sand; telling yourself “if they do ‘x’, I will do ‘y’.  If they prove not to be a threat, you move back down to Condition Yellow. If they do ‘x’, you move to Condition Red.

This might be the most important part of this entire exercise.  You have to decide right now how you will handle a threat so that when you are in Condition Orange or Red, you already know how you’ll respond.  Your heart will be racing and your mind will be taking in too much information to decide in THAT moment.  In Condition Orange, you just draw the mental line in the sand and already know how you will respond.

Condition Red

You are ready to fight.  You may or may not have to but you are mentally ready.  Most of the time you won’t actually have to.  Mr. Dirtbag is often a coward and the simple act of you being aware will be enough to stop him. If Mr. Dirtbag does move to do you harm, you have already decided your action.  Now you must act with as much force as is needed to stop the threat.

Here is an example:

My wife and I are at home in condition white, getting ready to go to the mall for an errand.  We are both armed.  We leave the house and switch to Condition Yellow.  We remain there until we walk into the mall and three thug-looking guys stare us down as they enter right before us.  We are now in Condition Orange, with all of them. 

We have discussed this previously and agreed that if there was ever the need to draw on a single person, I would be the one to draw.  If there is need to draw on multiple people, I draw on the right person, she on the left.  This isn’t to say that this is our first action, just what we would do if the situation dictates it.

Since we have both moved to Orange, we are both making mental lines in the sand and waiting for one of the three to cross them.  If the three continue into the mall and keep to themselves, we move back to Yellow.  However, if they turn around, we move immediately to Red. 

At this point, we haven’t drawn on Mr. Dirtbag and friends but we are ready to if they take us down that road.  If they turned around because they remember they forgot their receipt in the car and are going back to get it, we move back to Orange until they are out of sight.  If they start to move toward us and clearly mean us harm, we would act according to them and stay in Condition Red until they moved on.  At that point, we would de-escalate, eventually back down to Yellow.

For those of you who don’t have this skillset, try using this today.  It will take more effort in the beginning but will become second nature soon.

 
Situational Awareness and Training Situational Awareness are two related articles you might be interested in.