Situational Awareness

Where’s Waldo?
 I am going to show you a picture in the next slide, you will
Situational have sixty seconds to view the picture. After that I will
show you a series of questions, write down your answers
Awareness and then we will discuss what you saw.
  How many people total were involved in this accident?
 How many males and how many females?
 What color were the two cars?

Situational  What objects were lying on the ground?

 What injury did the man on the ground seem to be
Awareness suffering from?

 What was the license plate number of one of the cars?

 When we talk about situational awareness what are we
talking about?
- Is it knowing:
- how many cash registers are in a store?
Situational - How many people are ahead of or behind you in line?

Awareness - Where to park your car?

- If you fit into a store?
- What is eligible or ineligible?
  Who is watching you?
 The retailer
Situational  Patrons of the store

Awareness  Store employees

 Who else?
Situational
Awareness
  WHITE – A person who is in white is unaware, oblivious and pre-occupied. They can be described
as daydreaming and what I call “living in a bubble”. You will often see them looking down while
they walk, they can often be unresponsive when you try to get their attention and are often not
prepared for their actions in daily life. This is a very dangerous state of mind to be in, regardless of
the threat level that you live in.

 YELLOW – Someone who is in this stage is relaxed, but alert to their surroundings. They are not
focusing on any specific person or thing in particular but are difficult to surprise because you are
assessing the world around you. This is a very good level to live daily life at, as it does not induce
the stress levels commonly associated with orange, red or black but you can respond quickly and
efficiently because you have already formulated thoughts about what may happen.

 ORANGE – This is a heightened alert level, generally associated with a specific threat or focal point.
The only real difference between yellow and orange is the specificity of threat being assessed. In
yellow, you are simply analyzing everyone and everything, but here you are now focused on one
threat and are already making decisions about how to react. This is a good level to take action at

Situational because it can allow you to avoid an engaged altercation beforehand. The primary reason that
yellow is a better day to day level is because you are not tunneled in on just one potential threat as
you are here in red.

Awareness  RED – This is the Fight or Flight stage. At this point you are either engaged in a struggle or taking
action to (either mentally or physically). It is important at this point that you take the physiological
effects of the adrenaline dump into consideration. Ensure that you diligently avoid common
reactions such as auditory exclusion, tunnel vision and other physical responses that occur in high
stress incidents. Some of this will be unavoidable, but with proper training and preparation it can be
minimized.

 BLACK – Blind Panic/Psychological Shutdown and sometimes in a state of comatose. You have
succumbed to the panic and stress of the incident to the point that you cannot react or respond to
stimuli. This paralysis was most likely brought on because of a lack of mental preparation in any
other state of awareness discussed previously. The most likely of scenarios is that there is someone
nearby who can save you or that the conflict will end without harm to you, but this feeling will
forever have a lasting impact on you psychologically.
  Know your limitations and consider them when
assessing your potential response to a situation.
 Follow your gut instinct. So many people ignore the
clues that are right there in front of them, maybe
Situational because they want to believe in the greater good of
mankind. Of course, just like there are weather
Awareness conditions that reflect a pending hurricane or some
other natural disasters, there are often clues present
which tell you a violent incident is about to occur.
  Immediately upon entering any public place, you need to
scan the area and identify the exits, and take notice of any
obstructions or obstacles that would be in your way if you
needed to egress quickly. Determine the best place to sit,
stand or otherwise congregate that will give you the best
advantage if there were to be an incident.
 Also, take time to look at other people in the area.
 What are they wearing? A trench coat in July would be odd,
Situational but it may not always be that obvious. Look for any imprinting
around the bottom of someone’s shirt which may reveal a
Awareness concealed weapon. They may be licensed or even a cop, but
that is useful information to know too.
 Take note of people’s behaviors and be prepared to act if you
feel others in the room could get hostile towards one another.
There have hardly ever been fights that I been in or
witnessed that there were not plenty of advanced warning
through their body language, gestures, volume and pitch of
their voice and other clues.
  Situational Awareness and your senses:
 Touch & Taste - Touch and taste are two senses that are
incredibly enriching for those seeking to live more
mindfully and fully immerse themselves in their
Situational experiences. But for the purposes of being situationally

Awareness aware of risk and danger, you won’t use them as much.
Touch can come in handy though when you’re trying to
navigate in the dark, and must let the sensations of your
feet and hands lead the way.
  Sight
 How reliable is our eyesight?
 Eyewitness accounts of crimes are notoriously unreliable,
and famous studies — like the one in which you are asked to
concentrate on people passing a basketball back and forth,
and in so doing miss a man in a gorilla suit walking through

Situational the picture — show us that we can look right at something,

without actually seeing it.

Awareness  Sight is still an incredibly vital part of our situational

awareness — especially if we take the time to train ourselves
to look for things we’d normally miss. Our eyes tell us if
someone looks suspicious; they spot peculiar features of a
landscape to help us create a mental map to guide us home
from a hike; they take footage of the exits in a building or of
a crime that we can remember later.
  Hearing
 We are sight based creatures, we rely on sight to gain
most of our information
 However, our hearing is incredibly attuned to our
surroundings and functions as our brain’s first response
system, notifying us of things to pay attention to and
Situational fundamentally shaping our perception of what’s
happening around us.
Awareness  “You hear anywhere from twenty to one hundred times
faster than you see so that everything that you perceive
with your ears is coloring every other perception you
have, and every conscious thought you have. Sound gets
in so fast that it modifies all the other input and sets the
stage for it.” Seth Horowitz
  Smell
 Smell is possibly our oldest sense but we tend to ignore it
the most
 Our sense of smell is able to distinguish blood kin by
Situational scent, and not only can it identify danger through picking
up the scents of smoke, death, gas, etc., but can even pick
Awareness up on fear, stress, and disgust in fellow humans
 Understanding this will help you understand why
sometimes you begin to feel uneasy but cannot explain
why
  1. Not Monitoring the Baseline. If you are not monitoring the
baseline, you will not recognize the presence of predators that
cause a disturbance. One of the keys to personal security is
learning to look for and recognize these disturbances. Some
disturbances are dangerous, some are just entertaining.
 2. Normalcy Bias. Even though we may sense something that
could be alerting us of danger, many times we will ignore the alert
due to the desire for it NOT to be a danger. We want things to be
OK, so we don’t accept that the stimulus we’re receiving represents
Situational a threat. We have a bias towards the status quo. Nothing has ever
happened when I do this, so nothing is likely to happen.
Awareness  3. The third interrupter of awareness is what we define as a
Focus Lock. This is some form of distraction that is so engaging,
that it focuses all of our awareness on one thing and by default,
blocks all the other stimulus in our environment. This is when
someone is texting and walks into a fountain. The smart phone is
the single most effective focus lock ever invented. It robs us of our
awareness in times and places where it’s needed most.
  1. Monitor the Baseline. At first, this will require
conscious effort.
 2. Fight Normalcy Bias. Look at every disturbance to
the baseline as a potential threat. This will allow you to
stop ignoring or discounting disturbances and begin
making assessments of the actual risk. But as you learn,
Situational people may think you are jumpy or paranoid. That is
OK. It’s a skill that will save your life.
Awareness
 3. Avoid using the obvious focus locks in transition
areas. It is ok to text while you are sitting at your desk
or laying in bed. But it’s NOT ok to text as you walk from
your office to the parking garage.
 After all is said and done there is one way, perhaps the
best way, to maintain your situational awareness
Situational
Awareness Any guesses?
 Avoid
Complacency
Questions?