Awareness and Preparation is Key to Survival

Awareness for Survival

You can often avoid a self-defense situation completely if you make the effort to be aware in everyday situations. By following these steps, you can prevent a crime before it even happens.

First, make sure you’re watching what’s happening around you – not looking at your phone. You might be able to spot a potential criminal just by what they’re wearing and their behavior.

Stay away from people wearing clothes that do not match the current weather conditions, such as heavy coats on a hot day or other clothing where weapons can be concealed.

Then, you should be able to tell by what they’re doing. People who are wandering around aimlessly or monitoring certain places should be avoided. They might be on drugs or waiting to catch an innocent enough looking person who isn’t paying attention to their surroundings.

If someone is very suspicious, don’t hesitate to call your local police about a suspicious person – especially if they’re just waiting around in a parking garage. The police will appreciate you trying to keep the streets safe, even if the person turns out to be innocent.

Really, it can usually come down to common sense. If people look suspicious, stay away. If people are doing suspicious things, stay away. Look around for other suspicious people who may be working with one another. Take note of their genders, sizes (height and weight), skin tone, clothing and hair style, and other distinguishing features so that you can report it to police.

Sometimes, you can prevent even more dangerous criminals from succeeding. If you see someone suspicious leaving packages around a highly populated event, such as backpacks and boxes, call the police.

Given recent events, they could very well be leaving bombs or other dangerous materials. This could also be a drug trade. You should also be wary of people trying to access areas that they’re not supposed to.

This can mean utility closets, restricted areas, and rooftops. This is especially relevant if you work at a company or office, and someone you don’t know is trying to get into sensitive areas of the building. You should also be wary of unexpected delivery trucks.

Watch out for any unexplained smells or packages – especially ones near HVAC systems. Leaving these unreported can result in a lot of damage for the company. While it might not be an attack on the building, it can be a gas leak or other dangerous malfunction.

Another warning sign for these areas would be dead animals concentrated around one spot. This means someone suspicious has planted dangerous chemicals, and this should be reported to 911 immediately.

Mentally Preparing Yourself for Survival

In any survival situation, whether you’re in a self-defense scuffle or lost in thick woods, the most important factor remains the same – your mental state. As long as your mind is sound, you will have a much easier time surviving whatever situation you’re in.

In fact, this is the first thing that you’re taught in the US Army Survival Manual. This field manual can be bought in full on Amazon for about $10. The strategy for mental stability that you learn first in this book is S.U.R.V.I.V.A.L., which stands for Sizing up any situation that you’re in, Undue haste makes waste, Remembering where you are, Vanquishing fear and panic, Improvising when you need to, Value-based living, Acting like whatever natives do in the area, and Learning basic, necessary skills.

Doing all of these things will ensure that you are both confident and mentally stable during stressful situations. Many sources consider mental preparedness to be the most important factor between life and death.

WWII and Korea veterans who had to survive the wild and hostile environments of the jungle and forest swear by the effectiveness of being mentally prepared. The main disadvantages of being stressed and freaked out during these times are plentiful.

First, you’ll be less efficient. If you’re confident and feeling good, you’ll get to work on finding food, water, and making shelter – or in a threat situation, protecting your life. However, if you spend your time freaking out and panicking, you’ll barely get anything accomplished, let alone accomplished effectively.

Second, you’ll have less energy. If you’re calm, you won’t waste much energy and will be actively thinking about preserving yourself. If you panic, you may find yourself pacing and wasting time and energy.

This will help you conserve water, food, and other resources. If you aren’t thinking and you’re blowing through everything, you’ll probably run out of water before you know it. This also has an effect on basic self-defense.

For example, if you keep a level head during a fight, you can probably get the upper hand on your opponent – especially if they’re inexperienced. The most important thing you should mentally prepare for in self-defense is the reality that you very well may have to kill your attacker.

For many, this idea is horrible – having to take another human being’s life. You should prepare for this kind of mental anguish in the event that you actually have to take major action that could result in the death of your attacker. Being mentally prepared is more worthwhile than being physically prepared.

Self Defense Tools Are Useless without Training and Practice

If you purchase some kind of self-defense weapon, you’re going to want to practice extensively with it. If you don’t, when the time comes, you could very well choke and succumb to fear or panic, or not know what to do at all.

If you do know what to do, then you’ll be confident and not back down in a fight for your life. If you bought something like a knife or a stun gun, you should sign up for self-defense classes, where they can teach you how to use these in addition to your bare hands to quickly incapacitate your attacker.

In these classes, they may teach you how to guard certain areas of your body and where to attack your attacker, such as the eyes and groin. These classes can be life savers when you need them, and cost around $50-$100 per month.

This is especially important when you’ve chosen a firearm as your form of self-defense. You should go out to a range with a big box of ammo, and practice your aim at various distances.

Getting a good feeling for your gun is essential. You should practice your sight picture, which is how your firearm’s sights look in relation to your target, to ensure you’ll land a proper shot.

You should also consider taking shooting classes in order to get a better understanding of how your gun works and how to use it without even having to think about it. You should also keep regular maintenance of your self-defense weapon.

This is especially important with firearms. If you bought a small revolver, went out and shot it at the range, and didn’t clean off the residue in the cylinder, it very well may not fire when you need it to.

Cleaning is even more important with semi-automatic handguns. If not taken care of, they can very easily jam on you. You can buy pistol cleaning kits on Amazon from a company called Hoppe’s, which is a very trustworthy company.

You should make sure that whatever kit you buy matches the caliber of your gun. If you bought a .45, then the cleaning kit that fits 9mm, .38, and .357 will not work for your gun.

This is important because of the size of the cleaning tools. Hoppe’s does also sell a universal cleaning kit for $22, if you want to spend a little more. You’re also going to want to get some Ballistol to lubricate the gun, which will cost about $10 for a good sized can.

Once you have these, you can look up a YouTube video for your make and model of gun on how to clean and disassemble it. This is important because even if you did all of that preparation and training, it’s useless if your gun is dirty and doesn’t work.