The Tactical Edge - October

Situational Awareness, Part 2

Last month on the blog, we talked about your need to be aware of your surroundings to be aware of potential risks, so that you could take steps to avoid them. This is called situational awareness. It can keep you from an unplanned visit to the local emergency room, or in an extreme circumstance, save your life. I think this is important enough that I’m going to give you the complete definition again. Your goal will be to understand it and then to practice it.

Situational awareness: the basic definition is the ability to scan the environment and sense danger, challenges and opportunities, while maintaining the ability to conduct normal activities. In other words, to pay attention to your surroundings while not appearing to be paying attention. It is simply knowing what’s going on around you. The late Col. Jeff Cooper developed a color code for situational awareness and states of readiness.

Last month we started with Col. Jeff Cooper’s color codes and how they are used to define awareness. The colors are white, yellow, orange, and red. We covered the colors white and yellow and what they mean. If you’re not sure of your understanding, go back to last month’s blog and read it again.

This month we are going to continue on and cover the colors orange and red and develop the specific skills to improve your awareness. Before we go into the orange and red situations, we need to talk a little bit more about color yellow and what you’re trying to perceive in this mode. While you are relaxed and attentive in yellow mode, you need to be looking for possible specific threats. To do this, you need to develop a baseline of what you should expect to see in what you are observing. Once you have that baseline in your mind, things that are not normal will tend to stand out. The things that are not normal are your potential threats. Those are called the anomalies in your observations.

Establish a Baseline Wherever You Go. Every environment and person has a baseline. A baseline is what’s “normal” in a given situation, and it will differ from person to person and environment to environment. For example, the baseline at a small coffee shop will usually entail people reading a book or working on their computer or speaking in hushed tones with their friends. The baseline at a rock concert would be loud music and people looking at the stage while either jumping up and down to the music or swaying their bodies to the beat. That would be normal.

According to Patrick Van Horne, situational awareness expert, and instructor of the Marine Combat Profiling system “Anomalies are things that either do not happen and should, or that do happen and shouldn’t.” Anomalies are what direct our attention as we take in our surroundings and what we need to focus on to achieve situational awareness. To establish your baseline for what is normal, ask yourself these questions:

Baseline questions: what’s going on here? What’s the general mood of the place? What’s the normal activity I should expect to see here? How do most people behave here most of the time?

Anomaly question: What would cause someone or something to stand out in this situation?

Once you have a situation with an anomaly, you would escalate your awareness up to Condition orange. Now you have to determine if this is unusual or a potential threat.

ORANGE

You enter Condition Orange when you identify a possible, specific threat. Something isn’t quite right and has your attention. Your goal isn’t to take action while in Condition Orange. Rather, it is to become extra vigilant so you can determine if a possible danger is in fact a threat that needs a response. Maybe you smell smoke, or perhaps you identify a person in the water who may be drowning, or maybe the guy walking towards you in a dark side-street is acting funny. In all of those situations, you’d want to be in Condition Orange.

While in Condition Orange, you should be formulating an attack plan on what you’ll do if you verify the threat, e.g., “If there’s a fire, I’ll call 911,” or  “If he’s drowning, I’ll jump in and rescue him,” or “If he pulls out a gun, I’ll pull mine and shoot.”

When you’re in Condition Orange, stress levels will increase, as will your heart rate. However, you shouldn’t experience any cognitive or motor deterioration.

Staying in Condition Orange’s increased vigilance level on a regular basis isn’t recommended as it can be mentally and physically taxing. If you verify that a possible threat isn’t a threat, you should immediately drop back down into Condition Yellow’s relaxed alert. However, if you confirm that something or someone is indeed a threat, you should immediately move to…Condition Red.

RED

At this time you have verified that your anomaly is a threat. now it’s time to implement the action plan you developed while in Condition Orange. When you’re in Condition Red, your mind and body are primed for action. Adrenaline is pumping through your veins and your heart rate is up to between 115 and 145 beats per minute. Studies have shown this to be the optimal level for tactical and survival scenarios. Complex motor skills, visual reaction times, and cognitive reaction times are at their peak.

While complex motor skills and visual and cognitive reaction times are at their best in Condition Red, fine motor skills deteriorate. You cannot continue in condition red indefinitely. The stress on your body and mind will deteriorate if action is not taken. That will put you into another color called condition GRAY. This is a condition that you do not want to find yourself in. When you reach this point, you have basically failed to act or react quickly.

GRAY

Condition Gray wasn’t part of Cooper’s original color system, but after analyzing years of research, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and his colleagues added it. When you reach Condition Gray, your heart rate rises above the optimal range of 115-145 BPM and goes up to 145-175 BPM. Consequently, mental and physical performance begins to suffer dramatically and puts the fighter at risk of being injured or killed.

Tunnel vision and loss of depth perception is common, which means a fighter may miss additional threats in the vicinity. Tunnel vision also often causes fighters to “not see” innocent third-party bystanders in a fight. This phenomenon is a big reason why most firearms trainers these days instruct students to get in the habit of scanning their environment after they neutralize a threat. The simple act of looking side-to-side can help disrupt tunnel vision.

Auditory exclusion is another common symptom of Condition Gray. Fighters who’ve experienced auditory exclusion report not hearing their partner’s gun fire, even though the gun was going off right next to him. However, they’ll often remember hearing shouts from their partner.

Complex motor skills, like gun manipulation or non-armed combatives, begin to suffer in Condition Gray. Gross motor skills, like running, jumping, pulling, and pushing are still at optimal levels.

One possible and positive symptom you may experience in Condition Gray is “bullet time”– a mental phenomenon in which everything around you appears to be moving in slow motion, a la The Matrix. Bullet time can give a fighter more clarity and help him react. In his study on deadly force encounters, Dr. Alexis Artwohl surveyed police officers who had experienced deadly force encounters and found that nearly 62% of them experienced slow-motion time.

It’s called “Condition Gray” because Grossman believes more research needs to be done on arousal levels where the heart reaches 145-175 BPM.  Grossman notes in his book On Combat  that while most untrained men will begin to experience the mental and physical deterioration outlined above, some fighters are still able to perform at optimal levels in Condition Gray. Research indicates that with proper training and stress inoculation, fighters can properly and safely “push the envelope” of Condition Red into the elevated heart rates of Condition Gray. If you’re still at this point and you haven’t resolved the threat, then you move on to the next color which is BLACK.

BLACK

Condition Black wasn’t part of Cooper’s original system either, but was added by the U.S. Marine Corps. When you reach Condition Black, your heart is beating faster than 175 BPM. At this level of arousal, a fighter  — even a well-trained one — experiences catastrophic breakdown of mental and physical performance. In other words, bend over and kiss your butt goodbye.

Always remember that awareness and avoidance are the best self-defense strategies. Awareness of your environment, attacker rituals and your instinct comprise the majority of self-defense. Your first line of self-defense against a violent situation is to avoid it. Trust your instincts and do not hesitate. If you cannot avoid the situation, then mentally prepare, have a plan and execute with full conviction and purpose. Make Jason Bourne proud!

Hopefully, you have read and reread this post and understand it sufficiently enough that you never get to condition Black. All you have to do is scan your environment, look for the anomalies, decide what to do with them and as that wholesome southern comedian always says: “Git ‘er done!”

Well that wraps up this month’s issue of the blog. We hope you’re reading it, enjoying it, and most of all benefiting from it. If you have comments, please send them to us. We love to get email. In the meantime, keep your gun clean and your powder dry and take someone to the shooting range or training class with you.