II – Aware

Situational Awareness Building Exercises

Whether being ready to protect yourself or your loved ones every day, or volunteering on your church security team, developing keen situational awareness should be priority #1. Think of being situationally aware not as being paranoid, but as being aware-anoid!

[ Read SemperVerus articles on the topic of SITUATIONAL AWARENESS ]

In fact, “THE Primary Factor in self-protection/self-defense is situational awareness,” says Mark Hatmaker in his article, Warrior Awareness Drills.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, A Simple Chart for Situational Awareness ]

One way to sharpen your situational awareness into a consistent ironclad habit is to consciously and intentionally routinize it everywhere you go, wherever you are, all the time; turn it into a moment-by-moment personal sport.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Live Life Left of Bang ]

Hatmaker says, “A useful practice to return awareness/alertness to the fore is to gamify your awareness, that is, to use a series of specific awareness/alertness drills on a revolving basis that allow you to keep your mind a bit above the day-to-day routine while also making a bit of a game out of what may save your life.”

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Self-Defense and Church Security: Make Scanning Your Priority ]

In his article, he offers three drills to improve your “eyesight:”

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A Treasure Trove of Gun Information: The Defensive Use of Firearms Website

The website you ABSOLUTELY MUST bookmark if you are at all interested in learning as much as you can about self-defense and firearm insight is spwenger’s Defensive Use of Firearms.

It’s founded and maintained by Stephen P. Wenger, whose extensive credentials include hundreds of hours of law enforcement, self-defense, lethal force, armorer, public safety, and threat management training and teaching. He created the site in response to his frustration with seeing erroneous defensive tactics being taught by firearms instructors.

Along with the website, Mr. Wenger publishes the DUF Digest, a comprehensive examination of the practicalities and realities of the use of firearms for defensive purposes in a free, daily email digest of firearm-related news (subscribe at this list server site). He is also the author of the book, Defensive Use of Firearms (also see book information on Snub Gun Study Group), which he offers as a free PDF download.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Directory: Informative Free Email Newsletters From a Variety of Sources ]

The website’s valuable information is organized in the following categories:

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Situational Awareness: What Do You See?

In the above image, do you see a small cube in the center positioned in a room at the corner of two walls and the floor?

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Situational Awareness: What Are You NOT Seeing? ]

Or do you see one large “Rubik’s® Cube”-like cube comprised of seven smaller cubes that’s missing its middle eighth cube?

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Situational Awareness: 14 Ways to Walk Like You Drive ]

Or can you see both?

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Self-Defense and Church Security: Make Scanning Your Priority ]

This is a reminder to hone your situational awareness.

[ Read SemperVerus articles on the topic of Situational Awareness ]

Invite SemperVerus® to present its 5 life-changing success-generating components—prepare, aware, be, know, do—to your organization to inspire and motivate your members.

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Protection Book Review: Just 2 Seconds

The book, Just 2 Seconds: Using Time and Space to Defeat Assassins by Gavin de Becker, Tom Taylor, and Jeff Marquart, “examines the previously inviolate rules of protection, then subjects them to rigorous analysis. Will leave protection professionals reevaluating everything they know or thought they knew,” according to Vincent O’Neill, former Special Agent with the US Secret Service.

Gavin de Becker is the founder of Gavin de Becker & Associates (GDBA), a threat assessment and security firm that provides private, corporate, and government protection services and training courses.

While the book is 712 pages long, 570 pages consist of an extensive compendium describing thousands of successful and failed attacks, kidnappings, accidents, medical emergencies, and non-lethal incidents involving at-risk people worldwide over a period of more than 50 years, in addition to eight appendices of protection-related guidelines. Its title refers to the extreme brevity of time during which the average violent attack begins and ends.

The first 142 pages are comprised of five chapters detailing the important protective lessons learned from those events—highlighting 11 precepts that enhance personal safety—and the five essential insights for protectors. These conclusions are practical and proven standards for one’s own self-defense and the protection of others, that can be applied in church security.

The five essential insights for protectors (and individual self-defenders) are Now, Time, Mind, Space, and See. Here are a few excerpts for each one:

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