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 In this lesson, you will learn:
Here are important "A" words to remember as you consider your personal defense: awareness, alertness and avoidance. If avoidance isn't possible, your response is aggressive action.You have to be aware and accept that there are bad people and that there are bad neighborhoods and there are bad circumstances in which you can find yourself. You can't be the naïve wimp. You've got to realize that bad things can happen to perfectly good people. Remember the simple Boy Scout motto "Be prepared." You must be alert to possible danger. This is where your senses and your intuition kick into gear. If you find yourself in a run down area covered with graffiti where some of the people look like they'd slit your throat for beer money, you don't try to organize a guitar hootenanny for peace. Instead you leave quickly. Trust your intuition. Trust your instincts. Avoid the potential for trouble.
Understanding the "color code of combat" is a first step to being able to fully implement your self-defense skills in real life. Colonel Jeff Cooper, a combat firearms expert, originally developed these Color Codes. Don't be fooled by the simplicity of the codes. You need to etch these colors and their meaning into your mind. Success in combat/survival-defense relies more on an aware/alert mindset than any other combative element. There are four (4) colors in the code: White, Yellow, Orange and Red. As you progress from one color to the next you become better prepared to deal with specific threats. This is the condition of least preparedness. You are not ready for anything. You are in a fog, unaware of who or what is around you. You might be tired or preoccupied with worry. Alcohol or drugs might impair you. Think of people at the Mall during the holiday season. Folks are hell bent on gift buying and pay little attention to anything happening around them. In condition white you have NO choice but to RE-act to any threat of violence. That's providing you even get the chance to react. In a white state, you can be so quickly overwhelmed that you don't even know what hit you. You will be a victim.
How does someone grab your handbag if you are aware and ready for him? How does a knife get pressed to your throat if you're aware? The answer is - they don't. If caught in condition white, even a black belt or Army Ranger can be quickly defeated. Condition white is only appropriate for when you are locked snugly at home. When you leave home, you switch to .... Condition Yellow is the ready state. You are calm and relaxed but alert, scanning your surroundings for threats. You know who's in front of you, to your sides, and behind you. You can't be easily surprised. You don't think anyone will attack, but you are mentally ready to take direct action if something happens.
Here is a business application of Condition Yellow. When you go into a Walmart, you are immediately observed by a senior citizen called a greeter, "Hi, how are you doing today?" You feel, "Yes, this is a nice folksy touch that Walmart does." And, yes, it is a nice gesture but there is an ulterior motive. Greeting customers is a tried and true retail security tactic. Let the customer know that a store employee has seen them. The hidden message is "Hi, welcome to Walmart. We see you so don't even think about stealing anything." For the same reason, you will find greeters at high end stores and stores that cater to teens. In Condition Orange, the hairs start to stand up on your neck. The alarm bells ring. Your intuition tells you that something isn't right. Colonel Cooper uses the example of a man wearing an overcoat walking into a store on a sweltering summer day. What's wrong with this picture? In Condition Orange, you are set to go. You are aware of potential trouble and you begin to formulate an escape and/or attack plan. I can run here and here and here. I can use this and that as weapons. I can make a call on my cell phone. I can draw attention to my situation by this method or that. If the situation develops and your personal boundary is violated, you are ready to take direct action. You are on high alert. You are focused. You are a tiger ready to pounce. You hit. You hit hard. You run. Someone is leering at you or a teenager is leaning on your car or you are approached by a panhandler on the street. What is your intuition telling you? Listen! State your command - "Stay back" Create an opportunity to escape if you can. If the threat continues to develop, does it make sense to take the initiative and take charge of the situation? "Here is my wallet. Take it and go now!"
If you live or work in any area where street robbery is more than a random possibility, you might consider carrying a decoy wallet or purse containing old cards and twenty dollars in singles and fives. You lose twenty dollars. You gain an interesting anecdote. If the area is crowded, the mugger will probably be happy to grab the wallet and make a hasty retreat. If the area is quiet, the mugger may feel that he has time to make further demands. In this case, you might want to create a diversion and a few seconds of lead-time by dropping or tossing the wallet to the side and then running. In most muggings, you will find yourself surprised and startled. This is perfectly normal. This is what the mugger wants and he has set up the environment to his advantage. You will be frightened. Any reasonable person would be. You simply don't want to be completely paralyzed by fear. If you have run through imaginary threat scenarios in your mind in advance, you may have the foresight to gain an opening to escape by tossing the wallet or using your pepper spray or sticking your fingers in the mugger's eye, something. 
Fact: The Marine Corps has their own color code with red being the ready state and black the action state. In Condition Red, you are in the fight. You are being assaulted and you must respond to the attack. The time for dialogue has ended. You must end the violence and escape. This means that you must put the attacker in enough pain that he worries more about the pain than in continuing his assault. "I must inflict pain." Until you can cross this psychological barrier in your mind, you have nothing to win in Condition Red! When you have survival mindset that, "I will do what it takes, whatever it takes to live long enough to tell stories to my grandchildren," then you are 90% of the way home. You will punch, bite, kick, scream, stab, shoot, spray. You will hurt the other person. You don't want to be raped, or killed or have your children abducted. You aren't concerned about getting hurt or getting sued. You will win by creating an opening that will get you and/or your loved ones back home. Do you want to be tried by twelve or carried by six? 
For 15 years, from 1970 - 1985, I was a teacher at the high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What was unique about my class was that they were all involved with the Middlesex County Courts. All the students were either in jail, or on probation or parole or somehow involved with the legal system and the police. These were tough city kids when tough meant you defended yourself with your hands. Today, this kind of toughness has given way to weapons. If you walked into my classroom, you wouldn't like what you saw but you wouldn't be shocked. The classroom looked more like a gym with weights and punching bags. The students had the requisite tattoos, gang colors and attitudes. All except for one student, named Billy. Billy looked like Matt Damon. Years later, Matt Damon went to this high school. Harvard University is only a block from the high school and Billy looked much more like a studious Harvard preppy than a tough city kid gone wrong. He wore polo shirts and freshly pressed chinos. He was a clean version of clean cut. First time visitors to my program never failed to ask how Billy fit into this mix. And the other students and I would just laugh. You didn't mess with Billy. Billy was in my class because a couple of years before he had gone on a one day crime spree. Billy and his mother and younger sister moved into a new apartment in East Cambridge. Next door lived this sleazy guy. The guy spent most of his free time working on his beloved customized Camaro in the driveway between the two houses. Whenever Billy got home, either his mother or sister would start complaining about him and how much they didn't like the way he looked at them or talked to them. Compounding the pressure on Billy was his mother who kept reminding Billy that he was the man of the house. Now what is poor little preppy Billy to do to stop the sleaze? On a Summer's morning not long after, Billy went out to the back of his house and under the porch retrieved the dozen one gallon cans of gasoline that he had been collecting. He first goes to the sleaze's house and burns that to the ground. Then he found and torched the prized Camaro. He was on his way to the garage where the guy worked to burn that down but the cops found him first. Would you do what Billy did? You are a fourteen-year-old boy who is confronted by a someone who continues to torment your mother and sister. Billy's mother said that she had called the police and the police said to the guy at his front door, "Gee, Mr. Sleaze, do you think that you could tone down the rhetoric, the people next door are a little sensitive?" Can you guess that the police intervention was ineffective? And, really what could the police do? Was Billy right or wrong? Was Billy's mother wrong? Could she have continued to call the police? Perhaps, she could have talked with this guy? Certainly, she could have considered relocating moving away from the threat. The problem was solved but at what cost to her son? Billy was sentenced to a juvenile correctional facility and later on probation to my class. Billy never showed any remorse for his actions. He always maintained that he did what he had to do. Unfortunately, there are not always clear-cut solutions to difficult problems.
Our human bodies are made up of millions of cells composed of chemicals, enzymes, chromosomes, DNA and lots of other stuff. I am not a physiologist. I am not a psychiatrist. I just hope that I have a little common sense. Whether you are talking about the Space Shuttle or the human body, whenever you have lots of stuff in continuous motion, things can go wrong. There live among us a small number of people, maybe 1-2% of the population, who are undisciplined, unscrupulous, drunk, drugged, and/or deranged who are primarily motivated by their personal greed, lust, anger, stupidity, laziness or the little voices they hear in their heads. Given the chance, these people would do any of us any amount of grievous harm if it would give them the smallest possible gain. And we have terrorists. We have the sniveling little computer hackers, probably smart enough to do a lot of good for the world, but who choose instead to disrupt the quiet order of things because they have no friends or simply because they can. And we have international terrorists, upset that America is the lone superpower and that our system of government seems to work. Fact: For the first time in history, a country has the power to take over the world and doesn't. Would any competing forces do the same? The full use of our military might to conquer has not even been an issue in this country. We can't change these people - for us to be safe, we must lock them up until they decide that they want to change. Then, they must somehow convince us that they have changed. Then we must keep them under very close surveillance until we are sure that they are true to their word. In prisons, we must provide opportunity and encouragement to those who want to change. We can't change them. Each individual must make a decision to change himself. During my teaching years, there was a major crime wave in North Cambridge, which was normally a quiet residential neighborhood. Over several months, more than 100 homes and businesses were burglarized. The full complement of LEOs responded. There were the city cops and detective and state police and county police. There were even FBI profilers called in to consult. More than a few locals, reporters and academics, decried the stealing as a sure sign that civilization as we know it was ending. I asked my class if they knew anything about the robberies. Almost to a man they said, "Crime wave, my ass; it's just Todd and his numnut friend." Eventually, Todd and his friend are captured and the crime wave ended. It was not 100 criminals committing 100 crimes. It was Todd and numnut friend committing 100 crimes. What do we do with Todd? Did someone forget Todd's seventh birthday? Was Todd's father a jerk? Why hadn't Todd learned that breaking into other peoples' houses and stealing their silver and TVs was a bad thing? Did poor Todd lack self-confidence? Let's hold a symposium to study the issue. Of course, Todd knew that breaking into houses was bad and he did it anyway. Ask Todd for an explanation and you'd get his answer, "Screw you." Todd was very confident. And he was good. He robbed a hundred houses before getting caught. Todd knew that crime often pays. What Todd didn't care to consider was that crime usually doesn't pay forever. Given thousands of man-hours and tens of thousands of dollars, you get caught. Todd robbed houses because he wanted easy money for drugs, booze, his car, his girlfriend, vacations and nice clothes. For the same reasons you work, he stole. Now that he is caught, Todd is angry and he blames you. You'd better watch out.
Every year, we spend $30 billion dollars on the drug epidemic for prevention, interdiction and intervention. When all is said and done, there is little if any change. Because they are losers and they want to forget. Yah. Because they are kids and they want to be cool. Yah. Because they are thrill seekers and drugs do make you feel good - at least in the beginning. Yah. We can plead and plead and plead. "Please, kids, losers and thrill seekers, don't do drugs." And they think, "Relax." "Screw you." "Whatever." How many times do we have to tell people not to do drugs? About the same number of times we have to remind people not to drink bleach or walk in front of buses. We can't change people. We can be in control. We can deal with drugs three ways: We can legalize. We can seriously enforce existing laws. We can help people who want to change. A teenage boy was despairing of the conditions in the world. How could God allow all those people to be killed at the World Trade Center? How could God allow cancer and aids to kill so many? How could God allow so many to go hungry and cold at night? He threw up his hands to heaven? God, why didn't you do something? Quietly there came an answer from on high "I did do something. I sent you." Go to Lesson 31 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
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Master's Tip:
Criminals look for easy prey and this means targeting victims who stumble through life in Condition White. Criminals choose victims who are unprepared, unaware, insecure and easily intimidated.
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