Alex Hollings

China unveils laser “assault rifle” that can set your clothes on fire from 800 meters

As long as there have been science fiction movies, directed energy weapons have been a part of popular culture. Call them laser guns, phasers, or blasters, when people imagine the future, they tend to prefer one where guns fire bright lights, rather than good, old-fashioned lead.

In recent years, lasers have made the jump from novelty and industrial use to legitimate weapons platform on massive applications like the U.S. Navy’s surface combatant fleet or in some large aircraft applications. These high-powered lasers are used primarily as an air-defense weapon — locating incoming missiles or aircraft and focusing an intense energy beam on the target until the immense heat causes enough damage to end the engagement. These lasers, while certainly a leap forward in defense technology, still leave a lot to be desired for your average science fiction fan with dreams of slinging up Han Salo’s sidearm (the prop of which recently sold for an astonishing $550,000), but according to new reports out of China, the age of handheld laser weapons may finally be upon us.

Technically speaking, the new ZKZM-500 laser assault rifle, designed and built by China’s Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is classified as a non-lethal weapon, but don’t let that fool you. According to one researcher involved in the program, getting hit with the ZKZM-500 could certainly kill you by setting you and your clothing on fire, and even if it doesn’t, you’ll likely get the point.

“The pain will be beyond endurance,” he told journalists from the South China Morning Post. He went out to point out that the weapon can burn through clothes in “a split second, and “if the fabric is flammable, the whole person will be set on fire.”

The weapon system itself weighs in at a paltry 6.6 pounds, just about the same as an AR-15, and according to the researchers tasked with its development, it has an operational range of 800 meters. Although the platform itself was designed to be hand held, Xian Institute researchers point out that it would be well suited for mounting on cars, boats, or planes — likely because a larger external power supply would come in handy when trying to bullseye womp rats from your T-16… though if their claims can be believed, ammo capacity doesn’t seem to be lacking. They claim the ZKZM-500 can fire 1,000 two second shots using its on-board lithium battery pack (the same sort of batteries employed in modern smart phones).

According to the Xian Institute, the weapon is already production ready, and the first platforms will be given to anti-terrorism squads in the Chinese Armed Police. They went on to tout a number of uses for the new laser weapon, including temporarily disabling suspects through windows, or could even be used to burn through gas tanks on vehicles. While there are plenty of weapons that might be better suited for taking down hostage takers or rogue gas tanks, there actually is one significant advantage to this sort of weapons platform… and it’s one that you won’t find in movies.

Laser guns of this sort produce little to no noise and no visible projectile. In other words, when your hit by the laser produced by a ZKZM-500, there would be no way to know who was firing at you or from where, and with a range that’s creeping up on a claimed half-mile, the shooter could easily avoid detection and leave no traceable ballistic material behind after engaging a target.

As far as “non-lethal” weapons that are being touted for use in crowd control situations, the ZKZM-500 may not really be anyone’s best option. Burns are extremely painful and seeing someone’s clothes instantly set ablaze would likely do more to rouse a crowd’s fury than anything else. Often, there’s a fine line between riot and panic, but if you want to start either, an invisible beam from nowhere that sets people on fire could probably do it. The weapon itself may prove more novelty than practical, but it does represent a significant leap forward in hand-held, direct energy weapons.

The ZKZM-500 may not be the assault rifle of the future… but it certainly could lead to it.

Featured image: Soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army 1st Amphibious Mechanized Infantry Division prepare to provide Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen with a demonstration of their capablities during a visit to the unit in China on July 12, 2011. Mullen is on a three-day trip to the country meeting with counterparts and Chinese leaders. | DOD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley/Released

*Originally published on SOFREP and written by Alex Hollings

How bad gear choices can get you killed right here at home

Here at SOFREP, we do a lot of talking about gear, training, and general preparedness. Pulling from our military, professional, and hobbyist backgrounds with firearms, we do our best to relate our experiences to you in an approachable way, and often, those experiences suggest that training, not equipment, is what will save your life in a bad situation. If you’re not a capable shooter, the best optics in the world won’t save you. If you’re not safe and responsible in how you use your firearms, it doesn’t matter how much you spent on them.

Good gear, in most cases, is only there to make your life a bit easier, not to compensate for a lack of range time or a technical deficiency but it’s important to note that while good quality gear may not make you a better shooter, bad gear can potentially make you a dead one.

A U.S. Navy veteran was killed in Portland, Oregon on Monday by Portland State University campus police officers. Jason Erik Washington had a permit to carry his weapon, but as he attempted to break up a fight outside a bar, the pistol slipped from its holster and fell to the ground. As Washington attempted to recover it, police closed in, firing their service weapons and killing Washington in the ordeal. Details regarding the incident remain sparse, and I’d like to avoid offering my own conjecture as to exactly what went wrong, but at first glance it isn’t difficult to see how police could make such a mistake.

As they approach the scene of a fight that seemingly involves multiple parties outside of a bar, they hear someone nearby shout, “Gun!” (as witnesses reported occurring as the pistol fell). They closed in to find a man in the thick of the scuffle, pistol in hand — so they shot him. In those circumstances, with fractions of a second to make a life or death decision, those officers decided that, in their minds, may have saved lives. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

“He was a veteran who fought for our country,” Mohammed Tuffa, one of the men involved in the fight said after the fact. “Pepper spray could have broken everybody out. Everybody would have been on the ground crying.”

Now, as a worthy debate rages within the Portland community about if campus law enforcement should be armed, and further, whether or not their use of deadly force was appropriate for the circumstances, the rest of the firearm carrying community will certainly have strong opinions to match — but that won’t bring Washington back, nor will it reduce the chances that you could find yourself in the same terrible circumstances. We, out here in the rest of the world, need to look to these incidents for actionable lessons we can incorporate into our own lives or use to inform our positions on local policies and laws. From my desk in Georgia, I have little influence on how the law is written in Oregon, but my awareness can inform the way I vote and discuss local debates about similar policies and personally, it makes me stop and think about how I carry my firearm, and how I carry myself at the same time.

Whether you’re a break dancing idiot of an FBI agent, a legal carrier trying to do the right thing, or the moron that lost a pistol from the holster in a couch at Ikea, only to be found and fired by a six-year-old hours later in Indiana — it seems that the number of incidents relating directly firearm retention are on the rise around the country. As I’ve written about in the past, owning firearms may be a right per our Constitution, but carrying them is a responsibility. If you carry a firearm around people, irresponsible behavior puts lives at risk — and the margin for error is non-existent.

One mistake and someone could be dead. In the case of Jason Erik Washington, that one mistake appears to have cost him his own life.

Cheap holsters can be awfully tempting (and hell, some inexpensive holsters are great) but there’s more to choosing a holster than comfort and cost. During what we tend to call the accession pipeline for the Marine Corps (the first year of initial training in which you attend boot camp, combat training, and MOS schools) there is as much emphasis placed on firearm retention as there is on shooting them in the first place. I had already gone through several courses aimed at keeping a pistol in its holster with opponents attempting to take it before I was ever even issued a sidearm. There’s a reason for that: a weapon is only of use when you have it under control.

There are lots of holster styles to choose from, some rely on friction retention, others have buttons or Velcro straps, and so forth. It’s important that you train to suit your everyday holster (a Blackhawk Serpa uses a button release that could lead to a negligent discharge if you use poor finger discipline, whereas a friction retention holster will slide out more easily), but it’s also important that you choose a holster based on your circumstances, environment, and skill level. Finding a balance between quick access and ensuring your weapon is secure may take a bit of time and effort – but then, carrying a firearm was always supposed to be coupled with training to become competent with it.

I don’t know what kind of holster Washington was wearing, but it seems likely that, had that pistol not fallen from it, he might still be alive today. Keep that in mind as you take a second glance at your own rig, and think about what you could be doing to help ensure you’re not in the next headline about dropped pistols and the tragic ramifications of a mistake.

The life you save may be your own.

Image courtesy of the author

Originally published on SOFREP and written by Allex Hollings

Getting your hands dirty: The practical value of impractical hobbies

You take a rusty piece of scrap metal, a hack saw, a file, and you get to work. After hours of cutting, grinding, and sanding spread out of a week’s worth of days, you’re left with a knife that’s probably not quite as good as one you might buy at Walmart for just less than you’d spend on a six-pack of beer. Somehow, you don’t see this is a waste of your time. Instead, you sit back and stare at your accomplishment with a sense of wonder — imagining how much better you’ll be able to do on the next one-armed with the stuff you were able to work out in your head by screwing up on this one.

And you’re proud of how you screwed up less this time than you did the time before.

I’m no knife smith. Likewise, although I’ve torn every gun I own apart a hundred times, replaced parts, modified others — I’m certainly no gun smith. All I am is a guy that spends the better part of his day at a desk. I use these two hands to press buttons, communicate thoughts, and make my living — and despite the real and powerful sense of accomplishment I get from writing something I’m particularly proud of, my profession is, at its heart, a purely intellectual one. I think, I communicate, others read and respond, and through the miracle of modern technology, a dialogue of thought occurs. My thoughts and yours congeal into something new: an argument about how I’m wrong, a nodded head about how I’m right, or the realization that my little piece of the analytical puzzle, combined with a dozen other pieces from other sources, can combine into a greater understanding that, although I may personally lack, I can play a role in helping you to discover. I’m honored to play my part in the song and dance that is our constantly developing understanding of the world beyond our personal horizons but after ten hours of reading press releases and responding to emails, I find myself growing impatient with the slow march of progress that is our collective understanding.

There we all are, sitting at desks, answering phones, attending meetings and generally doing all the things that we have to do to keep our families (and society) afloat; there’s a nobility to a long day’s work, an honor in doing what needs to be done, but sometimes it all feels too ethereal. This imaginary society we’ve built in our minds and manifested into reality is a wonderful thing, complete with internet porn, kitten adoption centers and everything in between, but sometimes the role we play in that mammoth machine feels too small. Sometimes, a hard day’s work starts to feel inconsequential. Sometimes you just want to shape the world the good old-fashioned way: with your own two hands.

My next-door neighbor doesn’t have the internet. A Georgia boy, born and raised, he’s spent the better part of his sixty-plus years in the patch of woods we both call home, and aside from a stint in the Air Force during Vietnam, and another in prison a few decades ago, he’s made his living with a welder in his hands and little concern for who the president was sleeping with or how diplomatic efforts were unfolding a world away. His worldview is, as he’d admit, smaller than my own. While I sit up at night, wondering to myself about the implications of the Trump/Kim summit or about China’s growing influence on American domestic politics, he heads off to bed, content in knowing that where there was once just a pile of steel, there was now the frame for a machine, willed into being by his own two hands. When I finally fall asleep, hoping that my work has played its small part in our ongoing global conversations, a part of me remains unsatisfied and anxious. What if I missed the mark? What if my analysis is wrong? What if I made a silly mistake in a piece and the internet wolves are going to tear it apart? My sense of accomplishment is inherently delayed, because my work doesn’t matter if nobody reads it. My thoughts don’t matter if I can’t translate them from fired synapse into coherent language and I can’t know if I managed that feat until I see the response from others.

My neighbor suffers no such anxieties. He finishes his work, takes a step back, and judges for himself. Yup, he thinks out loud past the toothpick he’s chewing on, this’ll do. He doesn’t need things like the internet to have passion.

I’m one of those guys that leads a charmed life. Despite all my best efforts to get killed, I’m still here and thriving. My profession and my passion are one in the same: writing is what I’ve always dreamed of doing, and somehow through the miracle of technology and the universe’s sense of humor, I make a good living doing so but sometimes, I just miss getting my hands dirty. Every once in a while, I need to do something that’s just meant for me.

So, I yank a piece of scrap metal out of a pile, and I start to grind. I buy a new buttstock for my AK and set about figuring out how to yank off the old one (Pro Tip: use a C-Clamp or vice rather than a hammer like YouTube suggests if you want to salvage the old one). I don’t need another knife. I don’t need to fiddle with my rifle, hell, I’ve got plenty of rifles, I don’t even need this one to begin with. What I do need is a chance to reconnect with the physical world; to make something and judge it not only on its merits as a knife, or a gun, or a car but based on me, and what I think I’m capable of.

Sometimes, I’m disappointed and know I can do better. Sometimes, I’m surprised at how well I do. Always, I feel better for having tried.

I’m sure I could come up with a good reason to have made this if I tried hard enough.

Here’s to our impractical endeavors. Whether you collect kids toys from the 1960s, tie your own flies for fishing, hunt deer, tinker with cars, or bake cookies these things are more than an opportunity for us to busy our hands along with our minds, they represent a deeper connection to the world we live in.

Not the geopolitical world. not the macro-perspective on humanity world, but the real one all around you. I love what I do and the world I operate in but I value my time spent in the garage, busting my knuckles open and shaping reality with my hands instead of my perceptions. If you, like me, are blessed and fortunate enough to get to live your life in both worlds, be grateful.

We’re the living bridge between the past and the future. We’re the real people lofty political ideas lose sight of. My impractical hobbies offer me a very practical anchor: luring me back from my global concerns and macro-perspectives into a small room beneath my house, where all that matters for the next 15 minutes is beveling this blade right in front of me just so, in time, I can step back and say yup, this’ll do.

Images courtesy of the author

Originally published on SOFREP and written by Alex Hollings

A simple mental exercise that increases your chances of surviving a gunfight

For a defensive minded person, potential threats to the well-being of you and your family are always near the forefront of your mind. Whether you’re walking down a dimly lit New York City alleyway or trudging up the steep and well-worn mountain path behind your wooded home, there are dangers to consider and mitigate if you want to ensure a long and fruitful life — and it’s this mindset that prompts many to carry their own iteration of the common Everyday Carry (EDC) loadouts. A concealed pistol, a good quality pocket knife, a flashlight, and for those who tend to be particularly well prepared, a tourniquet are all fairly common things to find in the daypack of a guy like me, but in the grand scope of survival, none of the stuff I have strapped to my waist or stashed in a backpack in my trunk matter nearly as much as the simple matter of objective observational awareness.

Life or death situations are tricky — particularly because you very rarely know you’re going to be in one until you’re already right in the thick of it. In those moments, split-second decisions can mean the difference between life or death but most people aren’t mentally prepared to make those sorts of decisions because of a simple mental crutch we big-brained monkeys tend to cling to called normalcy bias.

What is normalcy bias?

Put simply, normalcy bias is our natural inclination to assume the best about a threatening situation because the breadth of your experience tells you that things will turn out fine. Leading a predominately safe life (as most of us do here in the United States) establishes a mental norm within our minds, leading many to underestimate the severity of a situation or the likelihood of a negative outcome. Normalcy bias doesn’t manifest in a slow rejection of the situation at hand, but as a delay in your processing of what’s going on around you. In the moment, with a threat approaching, many hush away their gut instincts, dismissing their concerns as paranoia: after all, what are the chances that the threatening looking character ten feet back and closing is actually a bad guy? What is the likelihood that the bag that kid left in the street is actually a bomb? That car can’t really be trying to run over pedestrians… can it?

That momentary unwillingness to accept the likelihood that your life is in danger is often the last thing that goes through a victim’s mind just before the worst happens — “I never thought this would happen to me.”

How do you overcome it?

Combatting normalcy bias is one of the few tactical skill sets you can practice by yourself, inside your head, with no gear or equipment. The secret isn’t to live in a constant state of paranoia, but rather to legitimate practice maintaining an objective mindset when assessing the threats around you. If you have a bad feeling about a situation, don’t dismiss it as nonsense, engage with it. If you notice something out of the ordinary, chastise yourself for not keeping your distance, rather than for allowing your concerns to get the best of you.

It’s not a coincidence that many veterans learn to shy away from crowds and choose seats that allow them to keep an eye on the crowd: it’s not because they expect something bad to happen, it’s because they’ve seen bad things happen, and accept that they can. For many who have lived their entire lives within the relative safety and comfort of the American way of life, it can be harder to embrace this mindset. After all, if you’ve never seen a gunman open fire on a crowd, it can be difficult to assume that’s what’s about to happen right before your eyes, even as the killing begins. That split second of hesitation keeps you, and those with you, in the line of fire, prevents you from responding with appropriate force when possible, and, chances are, may cost you your life.

In the moments before an attack, all you have to go on are your instincts and suspicions. Focus on managing them without disregarding them. (Image courtesy of MaxPixel)

And when I say, “split second,” I really mean it. National statistics show that the average time a police officer has to mentally justify the use of their weapon is just .21 seconds in simple scenarios and .87 seconds in more complex ones. On average, it takes about 1.19 seconds to draw a firearm from an open carry, friction retention holster, and longer from a concealed one. In total, we’re talking about a gun fight lasting between 2-3 seconds in close quarters — leaving very little room for complacency born out of assumptions.

Actively combating normalcy bias in your everyday life can mitigate the effects of our inclination to assume things are fine — demand a level of attentiveness in yourself until it becomes second nature. Trust your gut and act before something bad happens. It may be inconvenient to get the hell out of the mall when you spot someone looking nervous and fumbling with what could be a weapon inside their backpack… but inconvenienced beats dead any day. When armed, being aware of a possible threat and mentally preparing to draw your weapon if necessary can mean drawing and using the weapon quicker than you would if taken by surprise.

Don’t approach possible threats in a constant state of paranoia, but rather approach daily life like you might when merging on a congested highway: stay alert and be prepared to react.

Because you’ve only got to be wrong once to lose your life.

Image courtesy of Flickr

*Originally published on SOFREP and written by Alex Hollings

Marines test marksmanship training on moving targets

Marines are well known for a number of things: their strict adherence to uniform regulations, the sea bags worth of ego they carry around with them, and of course, their marksmanship. U.S. Marines train to develop competency with their weapons at greater distances than any other branch requires, as well as emphasizing closer range, higher paced marksmanship in the second table of the rifle qualification course.

But being a good shot on a range doesn’t necessarily translate to combat competency, and as anyone that’s ever thrown a football can attest, connecting with a moving target can be much more difficult than dialing in on a stationary one. While long distance shooting can help a Marine improve upon the fundamentals of rifle marksmanship, the only way to become a more capable war fighter when it comes to engaging moving targets is, of course, to train against targets that move.

Years ago, I recall Marines standing behind a berm, holding up long sticks with target silhouettes at the top. The Marines manning targets would pop their silhouettes up and move them along the berm in a manner that resembled a person walking along a ridge line, providing us with an opportunity to sight in and fire at a target that wasn’t simply nailed to a piece of wood. This method was better than nothing, but with our targets moving within our target lane, in the same direction every time and along a single axis, it really became an exercise in your ability to predict the mechanics of the range for the sake of a score, rather than a real challenge — but it was better than nothing.

Now, the Marines are experimenting with a simple target drone system that could allow them to practice their marksmanship against actively maneuvering targets, at varied distances, paces, and directions. These four-wheeled combat-bots were designed and built by the Georgia Based company, Marathon Targets, and they’ve been credited with some impressive statistics when it comes to improving the combat accuracy of Marine riflemen. Marathon claims the Marines of 2d Marine Division “developed a 104 percent increase in combat accuracy within a 24 hour period,” though the Corps itself has yet to confirm these numbers.

Marines fire against moving targets from Marathon.

Because these robotic targets travel on four wheels, they’re able to cover a wide variety of terrain, including open fields on long distance ranges as well as in and around structures for live fire urban combat applications. Much like a video game, Marines can find themselves defending their positions against a closing enemy force, or the robots can be placed at random locations throughout the complex, offering shoot house opponents that do more than stand stationary in different rooms.

The Marines aren’t the only American fighting force that are interested in these robo-targets. Marathon was recently awarded a three-year contract to provide moving targets to the Naval Special Warfare Command, and Marathon claims the Army has already tested the idea of using their targets to the tune of a “3.7 times increase in range throughput compared to traditional training methods.”

While Marathon may make some steep claims regarding how effective their moving targets may really be when it comes to improving a rifleman’s proficiency, there’s no arguing that training against a moving opponent could result in more capable shooters.

You can watch a demo reel of Marathon’s targets below:

And here they are in action against U.S. Marines:

https://www.dvidshub.net/video/588878/3-4-mout-clear

Images courtesy of Marathon Targets

*Originally published on SOFREP and written by Alex Hollings

How slowing down can help you win a fight for your life

Out here in the regular world, where law enforcement is just a phone call away and most bars have bouncers employed specifically to break up fights, fist fights tend to be pretty short. A few punches thrown, maybe some poorly executed wrestling, and unless you’re on your way to become an internet celebrity on WorldStar, people tend to start to intervene — and even when they don’t, fights usually end once there’s a clear victor.

Fighting for survival doesn’t work like that. A fight for your life doesn’t end because one party is willing to acknowledge the other is the victor and, more often than not, no well-intentioned bystander (let alone police officer) is coming to your rescue. If you ever find yourself in a scrap with someone that legitimately means to end your life, the rules play out quite a bit differently than they do between rowdy frat brothers outside a Margaritaville.

Training to defend yourself is a strange endeavor. Thanks to movies and our tenacity for hero worship, we tend to think of training like it’s a suit of armor: we don’t imagine a highly capable Navy SEAL falling at the hands of a poorly trained nobody with an AK-47 in their hands, but the fact of the matter is, most of the special operators we’ve lost throughout the war on terror were killed by nobodies utilizing a combination of luck and seizing their opportunity. That’s not because SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets and the like aren’t as good as we think they are — it’s because underneath all that training and high-speed gear, each and every special operator is still just a bag of meat, susceptible to the same punctures, impacts, and explosions that would have killed them before they earned their elite titles.

A fist fight that turns into a life or death struggle with a burglar is different from the combat situations most special operators find themselves in — with one notable exception: the likely outcomes. Either you’re going to die or he is. In that moment, training can either be a weapon you carry with you into that arena, or it can an interesting footnote in your obituary. Don’t believe me? Lots of people know all about the stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman back in 1995 (O.J. Simpson case) but what most people don’t know is that Goldman was a black belt in karate, and according to a number of expert recreations, may have put up a decent fight against his murderer that fateful night in October.

He lost and was killed though. So, all that time he spent practicing katas, training with sparring partners, preparing himself for a life or death struggle really boiled down to nothing more than a few extra moments of life before succumbing to defeat. Training is important, but at the end of the day, it’s what you do in the moment, how you manage the fight you’re in, that makes all the difference.

There are a million things that go into effectively managing a fight, and many of them don’t translate well into the written word. I could tell you, for instance, not to get tunnel vision when your opponent reveals that they’re holding a weapon, but learning how to balance awareness of the blade with defending against the attacks of their other three limbs is the sort of thing you just have to do, over and over, before you get good at it. The one thing I can impart, however, is perhaps the most important — and can improve your chances at surviving long enough to worry about things like tunnel vision: it’s simple, counter-intuitive, and one of the toughest concepts to impart on new fighters, but it’s integral — efficiency of movement.

Here in the states, we all grew up on a healthy diet of Rocky movies and haymakers. When we fight, we swing for the fences, hoping to land that one-punch knockout we always see on TV. The truth of the matter is, knocking a guy out with one punch is usually more of a lucky break than it is about skill (at least when competing with a talented opponent), and if no one is around to break up the fight, those hay makers are going to empty your tank pretty quickly. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth giving them a try (provided you can do so without telegraphing your intentions so much that you leave yourself open to counter), but chances are that even a few landed haymakers won’t deter an aggressor intent on taking your life.

Most one-on-one fights end up on the ground eventually. We don’t have choreographers in real life, so dramatic roundhouse punches and hooks and jabs soon give way to stumbling feet and adrenaline. Before you know it, you find yourself in the grass, grabbing and feeling for soft spots on your opponent like you’ve been given the green light on prom night. That’s when efficiency of movement needs to kick in. You’re in close quarters, your life is in danger, and this fight isn’t going to end until one of you is unable to go on.

Unable to go on, of course, might mean different things to different people. If my family is in danger, “unable to go on” comes right after “completely dismembered,” but your opponent may be willing to give up their assault after you convince them with a concussion and separated shoulder. The secret is lasting long enough to seize your opportunity.

Ground fighting is different than stand up fighting at a fundamental level. When you’re standing up, every time your body comes into contact with your opponent is about causing harm or defending against it — but when you’re on the ground, you’re constantly in contact with your opponent, feeling your way through attacks and defenses, looking for opportunities while trying to minimize the ones you present to your opponent. Most stand up fighters struggle to appreciate this difference, and will keep trying to hurt their opponent through force exerted the entire time they’re in contact on the ground – burning through energy all along the way.

A capable fighter I trained with in the Marine Corps was notorious for this. His long arms gave him a reach advantage when we were standing, but whenever we’d end up on the ground, he’d wrap his long legs around me and try to crush my torso with his thighs. Admittedly, I saw some Marines tap out under these conditions, but no one would in a life or death situation (nor would I while training). Sure, getting squeezed made it harder to breath and even made my ribs feel like that might crack… but I knew I could last longer being squeezed than he could squeezing. All he was doing was exerting force for the sake of exerting it — and eventually, I knew that would tire him out.

If you control your breathing and stay calm, you can even outlast some poorly executed choke holds. As long as air is passing into and out of your lungs, you’re still in this fight. (Wikimedia Commons)

Surviving a ground fight is about more than defending yourself and seizing an opportunity — it’s about lasting until the opportunity arises. When you find yourself tied up with your opponent and you feel them struggling to exert force against you, slow down and think about what the outcome of that force may be. Are they just squeezing your torso or are they sinking a submission? If they’re just squeezing, hell, let ‘em squeeze. When you feel their legs start to give, that means an opportunity is on the horizon.

Staying calm when someone’s meddling their way through a sloppy choke or a poorly executed armbar can be tough at first, and like all things, practice will make you better. Even if you don’t have a chance to train patience into yourself, you can improve your chances at surviving a life or death struggle by simply taking a deep breath and slowing yourself down a bit.

In that sort of fight, you’re going to get hurt. You’re going to want to quit.

If you can last longer than your opponent though, you’re going to get to walk away.

Featured image: A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force soldier and Lance Cpl. Justin Peterson, an infantry rifleman with 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, grapple during Exercise Forest Light 16-1 at Camp Aibano, Japan, Sept. 10, 2015. Exercise Forest Light Exercise is a semi-annual exercise designed to enhance to cohesion between U.S. and Japanese forces through bilateral combat training. During the exercise Marines and JGSDF soldiers conducted hand-to-hand combat training exercises such as: Marine Corps martial arts techniques, grappling, pugil sticks and toshu kakuto, which is JGSDF martial arts. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Carlos Cruz Jr./Released)

Originally published on SOFREP and written by Alex Hollings