safety

Off the beaten path: 4 tips for mitigating the risks of adventure traveling

I’ve done a fair amount of traveling over the years. I’ve stood next to pyramids on two continents, wandered around the Coliseum and the Acropolis, gone white water rafting in Alaska and relaxed at a wine tasting in Malta. Que Johnny Cash singing, “I’ve been everywhere,” because, although there’s still plenty of world left to see, I’ve seen enough to know what to expect when I get there.

Despite what Tumblr posts and motivational memes on Facebook would have you believe, travel alone isn’t really enough to educate you in the ways of the world. Tourism is a powerful industry; powerful enough to shape your experiences as you jet set around the globe. Many tourism based economies revolve around the idea of giving you (the tourist) what you want. In some places, that means only offering food that fits a region’s stereotypes rather than local tastes, but in others, like many Central and South American countries, it often means the construction of entire facades intended to convince you of some Disney interpretation of local life, carefully built at just the right angle to obstruct your view of reality. The reality of poverty tends to stay under wraps–but that’s not the only way traveling can mislead you.

It’s honestly pretty easy to write an article laying out a few simple steps that can help keep you safe when seeking adventure that’s a bit off the beaten path, but the problem with that sort of article is that the IDEA of adventure seeking inherently requires a bit of risk. The risk in some situations, is the very goal of the trip. Therefore, the secret is to actively manage those risks, and make sure you try your best not to end up in over your head.

Do your research.

Back in my HR days, I was always amazed at people who would come into my office for an interview without ever even googling the company they hoped to work for. If you didn’t know what we did, or the specific requirements for the job, you were unprepared and off my hiring list. Call it harsh, but if you don’t prep for our meeting I’ll assume you aren’t going to a competent leader if hired.

Just like you should know all you can about a company before an interview, you should know all you can about a place before you arrive. No, that doesn’t mean re-reading the brochure your travel agent gave you, it means doing a little digging around the internet, checking news stories and, if applicable, State Department warnings. If you’re visiting someplace you’ve already been, you should still do some research to see what new changes have occurred since your last visit.

This counts for cities in the U.S. as well. Before I set off on a trip to New Orleans a few years ago, I did some quick google research and found a story about local thugs approaching tourists and asking them “where they got their shoes.” Apparently, it would make people glance downward, allowing these criminals a chance to start the beat down with an unobstructed shot to the head, followed by a good old-fashioned mugging.

The very concept sounded too idiotic to be true–until I found myself standing face to face with a big, bald dude in a Bourbon Street alley less than 24 hours later, asking me where I got my shoes.

Maybe he saw me walking around in khakis and a polo shirt from afar and thought I’d be an easy mark, but realized he bit off more than he could chew when all 6 feet and 230 pounds of me was staring him in the eye and waiting for him to flinch. Maybe he was just really into alleys and shoes. Either way, I kept my wallet that night and possibly my intact face, thanks to situational awareness and a bit of background research. Having a real mean stare helps sometimes too.

Plan for the worst.

It doesn’t always seem cool to be the guy that’s planning for safety. Some will think you’re paranoid, others that you’re “playing operator” and just showing off your tactical vocabulary, and there’s usually at least one (like my wife) that’s a little too sure of his or herself, and in their ability to fight their way out of trouble. To quote Mike Tyson, “Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

You need to be the person with a plan for WHEN you get punched in the mouth. Identify a spot to meet back up if you get separated from your group, talk about how to get to safety and what safety IS in the location you’re in. At the mall in Cleveland, safety might mean just meeting up in front of Sears. In Turkey, it could mean finding a consulate, depending on your faith in local law enforcement (the last time I was there, they were far more interested in taking pictures of my wife with their cell phones than giving me directions).

If you’re traveling with veterans, they probably won’t think twice when you start dropping ORM bombs (Operational Risk Management) in the middle of planning a night of hard drinking in Honduran bars, but if you’re among civilians, you may catch a few stray eye rolls–but I’ll always take those over right crosses, or god forbid, stray rounds.

Trust your gut.

This is the second time I’ve written an article about travel advice and included those three words. That’s not due to a lack of creativity, it’s because your gut is THAT important when it comes to survival.

Trusting your gut is more than trusting yourself–it’s about trusting a specific part of yourself. I once tried to fight a group of guys in Italy over five Euros. My gut told me that I was in a dangerous situation, but it was my ego that told me the solution was to punch my way out of it. Fortunately for me, my wife was present in both body and mind and just gave the dude the money to save her husband’s hide. My ego said that was giving in, but my gut knew it was the fastest way to getting us out of a dangerous situation. Paying up isn’t always the right move, but in that instance, squaring off with street peddlers just outside the Vatican gates, it was the right call.

It’s not in my nature to avoid a fight, but it is often in my best interest. If you can manage it, especially when overseas, diffuse situations before they start and look for ways to ease tensions as they rise. Avoiding a fight might not only save your life, but even winning a fight in many countries will land you a trip to the sort of jails you’ve only seen on the Discovery Channel. Use that gut instinct to get you of harm’s way, before harm even knows you’re there.

Acknowledge that some risk is necessary.

In the military, every operation can be visualized in the form of a fraction: you take your risk factors and throw them on top, you take your objectives and stick them on the bottom, and hopefully your result will be equal to or less than 1. From there, work on ways to mitigate risks until the ratio starts looking friendlier.

Travel doesn’t have to be very risky at all, but sipping rum runners from the deck of a cruise ship isn’t everyone’s idea of adventure and if you’re hoping to go live a chapter in a book you hope to write one day, it’ll mean raising the risk number in the numerator of that fraction.

You don’t always have to avoid risks to reduce the threat they present, sometimes you need only to be aware of them. However, it’s imperative that you make an objective assessment of what could go wrong in the pursuit of your adventure, and pair it with an honest appraisal of how much risk you’re willing to deem acceptable. That’s a personal decision that needs to be based on your level of experience, ability to address dangerous situations on the fly, and the amount of faith you have in the people around you.

Risk doesn’t have to be avoided, but it should always be assessed.

Images courtesy of Twitter, Tumblr

Featured image courtesy of the author

Three things that seem like they’ll kill you (but probably won’t)

People have always been fascinated with death, and for good reason. Despite the massive breadth of experiences that one can accumulate over a lifetime on Earth, our final disposition after we exhale our last breath remains a unique kind of mystery: one we will all eventually solve, but can never relay to others. Death represents a number of things: an end for some, a beginning to others, and in a biological sense, it serves as the extreme end of the spectrum of tolerable human injury. To die is to get hurt in the most significant sense, and because we’re genetically hard-wired to avoid both, our minds sometimes have trouble differentiating between the two.

What follows is a short list of things we tend to think of as “deadly” that are, statistically speaking, pretty unlikely to kill you. Some of these misconceptions are born of our evolution based drive to avoid that which slithers or crawls, others are born of TV and movie tropes, but what they have in common is a generally accepted exaggeration of the threat they pose to your life or well being. It’s important to note, however, that these things are still dangerous, they’re just not nearly as dangerous (particularly in regard to loss of life) as we tend to think of them as.

So if you’re the type of person that likes to be prepared for any and all life-or-death situations, you may not want to completely ignore the following, but you can certainly put them lowers on your priority list than popular culture might have you believe.

If you live in America, you have little to fear from Ebola.

News of Ebola outbreaks in Africa in recent years have renewed fears among Americans about the possibility of global pandemics. The idea that a deadly virus could spread throughout the world’s population quickly thanks to modern air travel is a legitimate one that healthcare professionals strive to find ways to counter everyday, but this concern (and the appropriate abundance of caution when dealing with Ebola outbreaks in underdeveloped nations) tend to make people more fearful of the Ebola virus than statistics seem to warrant.

There is already an experimental Ebola vaccine that has seen great success in helping to prevent the spread of the virus in affected nations, and, horrible as it may sound, Ebola’s rapid incubation rate often ensures that those who are infected display visible symptoms early (allowing for some level of prevention when it comes to world travel) and tend to either die or recover (and develop antibodies) rather quickly. Because of the virus’ short lifespan, those infected tend to die or beat the virus before they have the opportunity to spread it very far. In short, Ebola is so dangerous to those infected that it often doesn’t allow for a great deal of dispersion. Because it has to be spread via fluid transmission, it also makes Ebola fairly easy to protect yourself against, unlike airborne pathogens.

Although that have been a number of Americans infected with Ebola over the years, most often as a result of work in underdeveloped nations, only two Americans have died of the illness after receiving treatment in the United States.

All you need to survive a venomous snake bite is a trip to the hospital.

It’s easy to see how human beings might have developed an evolution based fear of snakes. They’re powerful and stealthy predators that can not only take you utterly by surprise but pack an awesome punch in the form of venom-injecting fangs. Everything about a fist full of teeth punching at your from a crack in the rocks on the trail and pumping you full of blood-clotting venom is terrifying but terrifying doesn’t necessarily mean deadly.

The likelihood that you’ll suffer a snake bite that even requires any sort of medical treatment is extremely low: only around 3,000 to 5,000 Americans go to doctors or hospitals after being bitten by a snake each year (out of a population of some 325 million Americans). Even if you are one of those unlucky few, your chances of dying from that snake bite are about 1 in a 1,000 — meaning you’re more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the hospital than you are to succumbing to the venom in the bite.

What’s the best way to avoid falling victim to a snake bite? According to experts, it’s about as simple as just taking two steps back. Fast as snakes are, they can’t hurt what they can’t reach, and they’re unlikely to pursue you. Being scared of snakes may make sense evolutionary, but it’s hard to worry too much about a threat you can mitigate by moonwalking.

It is extremely unlikely that you’ll die a violent death in the United States.

Thanks to the constant media coverage of violent incidents taking place around the world, Americans tend to think of themselves as living in some extremely violent and dangerous times. That perception, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. As Luke Ryan has pointed out in the past, the world is currently amidst perhaps its most peaceful era since the dawn of civilization, with fewer people (per capita) dying in conflicts that at any other stage of human societal development to our knowledge. Here in the United States, violent crime has been on a steady decline for decades, with the Pew Research Center even going so far as to say that the common American perception of violent crime doesn’t “align with the data.”

The truth is, you are less likely to suffer a violent end in the United States than ever before, even in the era of terror attacks and mass shootings that dominate the news. These incidents, while tragic, remain isolated and infrequent when compared to the population of the country — but because they make for the most pressing headlines, they dominate discussions for days or even weeks afterward.

So, while terror attacks, snake bites, and even the dreaded Ebola virus are all real and legitimate threats to a person’s general well being, statistically speaking, they each pose very little threat to the average person, with more manageable risks accounting for a far larger portion of the “stuff that might kill you” pie chart. If you want to help ensure a long and fruitful life, you may be better off skipping the concerns about snakes and terrorists during your drive to work and instead focus on keeping your eyes on the road.

Because chances are much higher that you’ll lose your life while changing songs during your commute than it is that any of the things above will get you.

Feature image courtesy of Jean Beaufort

Get your wings to go: Surveillance footage shows KFC exploding

When it comes to being prepared, a lot of us always have two competing voices in our heads: one that’s constantly warning us about impending danger, and another that’s constantly dismissing those dangers as the products of our own paranoia. This threat-assessment schizophrenia is a product of our environment, of course — the United States is an overwhelming safe place to live, and as a result, we’re fortunate enough not to live our own worst case scenarios on a day to day basis.

Over time, we grow to listen to the dismissive part of our brain as it tells us not to sweat packing that med-kit for a trip to the park, not to throw an extra pair of socks in your bag for a short hike, and not to worry about the aggressive guy at the bar that keeps giving you the side eye. It all worked out fine last time; it’s sure to work out fine again.

But then the KFC down the street frieken explodes, like this one in Eden, North Carolina this week.

So far there have been no reported injuries or deaths tied to this incident, but it serves as a great reminder that despite our safe environment, bad things can still happen. While it’s possible that this explosion occurred as a result of some nefarious act, it’s also possible that it was nothing more than a good old fashioned accident — in either case, if you and your family were nearby when it went up and someone you loved got hurt, you’d be glad you had that IFAK in your trunk.

Being prepared isn’t about being paranoid, it’s just about taking small steps in advance to make things easier if ever the worst were to occur. Keep what you might need nearby, trust your gut, and don’t let complacency win out.

And maybe avoid KFCs after dark for a while… just until they figure out what happened to this one.

Feature image captured from included YouTube video

Off the beaten path: 4 tips for mitigating the risks of adventure traveling

It’s honestly pretty easy to write an article laying out a few simple steps that can help keep you safe when seeking adventure that’s a bit off the beaten path, but the problem with that sort of article is that the IDEA of adventure seeking inherently requires a bit of risk. The risk in some situations is the very goal of the trip. Therefore, the secret is to actively manage those risks, and make sure you try your best not to end up in over your head.

Do your research.

The very concept sounded too idiotic to be true–until I found myself standing face to face with a big, bald dude in a Bourbon Street alley less than 24 hours later, asking me where I got my shoes.

Plan for the worst.

It doesn’t always seem cool to be the guy that’s planning for safety. Some will think you’re paranoid, others that you’re “playing operator” and just showing off your tactical vocabulary, and there’s usually at least one (like my wife) that’s a little too sure of his or herself and in their ability to fight their way out of trouble. To quote Mike Tyson, “Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Trust your gut.

Acknowledge that some risk is necessary.

Risk doesn’t have to be avoided, but it should always be assessed.

Images courtesy of Twitter, Tumblr

Featured image courtesy of the author

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 most 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)

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 day pack 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 a 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