Date: 12/3/2015 7:38:39 PM
Subject: VERY IMPORTANT!!!!
VERY IMPORTANT!!!! Email Scam!
Feel this is worth passing along. With the holidays coming up, this could
be a real problem.
The newest virus circulating is the UPS/Fed Ex/USPS Delivery Failure.
You will receive an e-mail from UPS, Fed Ex, or USPS along with a packet
number.
It will say that they were unable to deliver a package sent to you on
such-and-such a date.
It then asks you to print out the invoice copy attached.
DON'T TRY TO PRINT THIS. IT LAUNCHES THE VIRUS!
Pass this warning on to all your PC operators at work and home.
This virus has caused Millions of dollars in damage in the past few days.
Snopes confirms that it is real.
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/ups.asp
PS Editor: I recently got an invoice email that thanked me for my
purchase. Well, first reaction is “I
didn’t buy that” and get mad enough to try and cancel the purchase, only to
click on a link that gives you a virus.
Be careful with strange emails.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tom Tedder Dec 10 (3 days ago)
Mark
This is a long article but I think it make some important
points for everyone to consider.
Tom Tedder
November 30, 2015
What to Do in an Active Shooter Situation
It’s a sad fact of life in the 21st century that active shootings have become a regular
occurrence in the United States. In other parts of the world, terrorist groups
are using active shootings to, well, terrorize. While the media focuses on the
firestorm of political debate these events cyclically create, I’ve rarely seen
them discuss what people are actually supposed to do in these situations.
According to the FBI, active
shootings in public places are becoming increasingly common. Which means it
would serve everyone to understand how to respond if they ever find themselves
in the line of fire.
Over the years I’ve talked
to a lot of military, tactical, and law enforcement professionals who’ve spent
their careers training and dealing with violent individuals: U.S. marshals,
SWAT officers, and special forces operators. And I’ve asked them all this same
question: What’s an average joe civilian like me supposed to do when faced with
a gunman who’s indiscriminately firing on people?
They’ve all answered the
same way.
In today’s article, I share expert-backed advice on how best to
react if you ever find yourself in a situation with an active shooter. Learning
how to survive a shooting is much like learning how to survive an airplane crash:
such an event is statistically unlikely to happen to you, and simple chance may
make you a victim before you’re able to take any volitional action. But if
there are things you can do to increase your odds of survival even slightly,
you ought to know and practice them.
Something
to Keep in Mind: You’re Probably On Your Own
In a study done by the FBI in 2014, it was discovered that most active shootings end in 2 minutes or less. That’s not enough time for law enforcement to arrive. So when
you start hearing gunshots in places you shouldn’t be hearing gunshots, understand
that you don’t have very much time to think about what you should do.
That’s why…
You’ve
Got to Know What You’d Do Before It Actually Happens
When any sort of emergency situation strikes, be it an active
shooter or even a fire, the natural response for most people, surprisingly
enough, is not to do anything. We highlighted several of the reasons for this
passivity in our article about why most people freeze up in emergency
situations. For example, the “normalcy bias”
causes victims to act like everything is fine even though things are far from
it. Our brain is predisposed to assume that things will carry on in a
predictable way. When the pattern is broken, it takes a long time for the brain
to process this aberration. This is why many people who witness traumatic
events report that it felt surreal, like they were watching a movie and it
wasn’t really happening. They also often say that at first they thought the
gunshots were fireworks or a car backfiring or a book falling — things that
would fit better in their usual paradigm of daily life.
Another bias that keeps us
from taking action is our natural tendency to follow the crowd. If we see that
everyone else is cowering in fear or locked up by inertia, then our natural
tendency is to act the same.
The way you overcome these
inclinations towards passivity is deciding exactly what you’ll do in the event
of a shooting — before one ever happens. You’ve got to have a plan.
I know it seems morbid, but
you really should visualize what you would do in various situations were an
active shooter to suddenly intrude upon the scene. What would your plan be if
you were in the office and heard shots coming from the floor beneath you? Would
you have time to run? If so, where would you go? If you heard the shots just
down the hallway and there’s no place to run or hide, what would be your next
step? Visualize your plan in as much detail as possible.
In an active shooter situation, seconds matter. You don’t have
time to figure out what you’re going to do when a guy starts spraying a
building full of gunfire. By having a general preconceived plan, you give
yourself a head start. This all goes back to our article on the OODA Loop. Remember, in any conflict there are multiple loops going on.
It’s your loop versus the shooter’s, and the first to complete their respective
decision-making cycle usually wins the fight.
OODA Loops can begin way
before an actual encounter starts. By coming up with a plan of what you would
do in an active shooter situation before one ever happens, you’re already
engaged in the second step: Orienting. Should you encounter a shooter, you
can act immediately because you’ve already begun the cycle and already have a
plan in place. Remember, ABO: Always Be Orienting.
Maintain
Situational Awareness Wherever You Go
Besides having a general
idea of what you’d do in an active shooter situation, another thing you must do
to increase your chances of surviving is constantly maintaining situational
awareness.
Stay in condition yellow. Condition Yellow is best described as “relaxed alert.” There’s no specific threat situation, but you have your
head up and you’re taking in your surroundings with all your senses. Most
people associate situational awareness with just visual stimulation, but you
can also learn a lot about a particular scenario from sounds. This is
especially true for active shootings. If you hear gunshots — or something that
sounds an awful lot like gunshots — that should be a sign that you need to
start immediately preparing to take action.
Though your senses are
slightly heightened in Condition Yellow, it’s also important to stay relaxed.
Staying relaxed ensures that you maintain an open focus, which allows you to
take in more information about what’s going on around you. Research shows that
when we get nervous or stressed, our attention narrows, causing us to
concentrate on just a few things at a time. A narrow focus can therefore
cause us to miss important details in our environment.
Bottom line: Don’t have
your nose constantly in your smartphone and don’t zone out; rather, you should
open your eyes, ears, and nose, and calmly and constantly scan your environment
to take in what’s going on.
Establish baselines and look for anomalies. As Patrick Van Horne notes in his book Left of Bang, a key component of situational awareness is establishing
baselines and looking for anomalies. A baseline is what’s “normal” in a given
situation, and it will differ from person to person and environment to
environment. A baseline in an office would be people working at their
desks or chatting in a lobby. A baseline at a restaurant would be people in
uniforms coming in and out of the kitchen and customers entering and exiting
the restaurant through the front door.
We establish baselines so
that we can look for anomalies. Hearing gunshots at a college campus is
definitely out of the ordinary, and should immediately trigger your active
shooter plan of action. But let’s take a look at a subtler anomaly. If you’re
at a movie theater and you see a guy entering the theater from the exit near
the screen, that should definitely put you on alert. It could just be a guy
sneaking in for a free movie, but it could also be a gunman. You don’t need to
go and immediately tackle the guy, but you’d certainly want to keep your eye on
him and make sure you’re prepared to quickly move out.
Know where all your exits are. If there’s one actionable takeaway you get from this article,
let it be this. Wherever you are, always know the locations of the nearest
exits. As we’ll see in a moment, running should be your first line of action in
an active shooter situation. You want to get as far away from the gunman as
possible and that often means getting out of the building where he’s shooting.
So whenever you enter a building, the first thing you should do is look for
exit signs and make mental notes of them.
You also need to consider
not-so-visible exits. For example, most grocery stores will have an exit door
in the very back in the “employee only” section. If you’re near the back of the
store and you hear gunshots from the front, you’ll want to head directly to
this rear exit. Another example of not-so-obvious exits is in restaurants. Most
restaurants will have an exit in the back of the kitchen. If you’re near the
kitchen and you hear gunshots near the front of the place, you’d want to
hightail it to this back door. Because these exits are in places considered
“employee only,” people have been conditioned not to even consider using them.
But in an active shooter situation, these kinds of norms obviously go out the
window, and preparing yourself to disregard them is a must.
Your Active Shooter Triage: Run, Hide, Fight
So you’ve heard shots and
screams. There’s an active shooting happening. What should you do? All the
experts agree that you have three possible actions: run, hide, and fight.
Run
Running away should always
be your first line of action. As soon as you hear gunfire, leave the premises
immediately using your preconceived escape plan and get as far away from the
shooter as possible. Ideally, you’ll be able to escape without having to cross
the shooter’s path.
Keep in mind that in an
active shooter situation, most people won’t want to leave because 1) they’re
cowed in fear, 2) they’ve let the normalcy bias take over, or 3) they think
hiding should be their first recourse. But you need to run, regardless of what
others are doing. Do all you can to convince them to come with you, but if they
don’t comply, leave them, and get out of the building or danger area as soon as
possible.
Don’t try to gather your
belongings. You can replace your laptop; you can’t replace your life.
As you make your exit, tell
others to come along with you. Once you’re out of the danger area, prevent
others (except for law enforcement) from entering the premises.
When you’re running, keep
your hands visible. Law enforcement will be checking you to decide if you’re a
threat.
This may go against every
humane compulsion you have, but don’t try to move or assist the wounded while
you’re making your exit. It leaves you vulnerable to attack; turning one
casualty into two won’t ultimately help things. Even the first law enforcement
officers to arrive at the scene will initially ignore the wounded so they can
take out the shooter. Just as their top priority is to stop the gunman, your
top priority is to get to safety.
If you’re in an open area
and there’s distance between you and the shooter, run as fast as you can in a
zig-zag pattern. Shooting a moving target is hard even for experienced
marksman, and many mass shooters have little or no experience with firearms. So
move as much as possible and take cover behind barriers that can stop bullets
(cement pillars, vending machines, etc.).
As soon as you get to
safety, call 911. Don’t assume someone already has.
Hide
Sometimes running isn’t an
option. Maybe the shooter is in front of the only exit and you can’t jump out
the window because you’re on the fourth floor. If you can’t make an escape, the
next best thing to do is to hide in a secure location.
You want to hide in a place
that’s out of the shooter’s view and that can provide protection if shots are
fired in your direction. If you’re in an office or school building, find a room
that has a lockable door. If you can’t lock the door of the room you’re in,
barricade it with a table and chairs. You want to make it as hard as possible
for the shooter to enter; he’s often looking for easy victims, and will move on
rather than bother pushing through the barrier.
Turn off the lights in the
room and be as quiet as possible. Be sure to put your cell phone on silent. You
don’t even want it on vibrate.
Stay away from the door and
crouch behind items that could offer protection from bullets like cabinets or
desks. Hide in a bathroom or closet if you can.
If possible, dial 911 and
let the authorities know there’s an active shooter in your building. If you
can’t speak because the shooter is nearby, leave the line open so the dispatcher
can hear what’s going on.
Don’t open the door unless absolutely necessary or if you can
confirm it’s the authorities who are knocking. According to Clint Emerson, Navy
SEAL and author of the book 100 Deadly Skills, shooters will often knock on doors or yell for help in the
hopes of convincing people who are hiding to show themselves.
If you can’t find a room in
which to secure yourself, hide in a location that offers cover and concealment
from the shooter, but still allows you to see him. If the shooter passes you,
you can make a run for it. If he doesn’t, it puts you in a position to attack
if necessary.
Fight!
When running or hiding have
failed or aren’t viable options, it’s time to resort to plan C: Fight!
Yes, some studies have suggested
that armed civilians can reduce the number of fatalities in an active shooter
situation compared to situations where there were no armed civilians. But what
these same studies suggest is that just having civilians — armed or not —
quickly take action against a shooter can reduce the number of victims too. So
even if you don’t plan on carrying a firearm yourself, commit to the idea that
if you absolutely have to (and, again, we’re
talking last resort here), you’ll attack an active shooter quickly and
devastatingly.
Will you get shot? Possibly. But it’s possible to survive
multiple gunshot wounds, and doing nothing will probably get you killed anyway.
Sadly, history has shown that many active shooters will unflinchingly shoot
people begging for their lives while they’re curled up in the fetal position. As
Chris Norman, a Briton who assisted the 3 Americans in their attack of the
train terrorist described his reason for
taking action:
“My thought was, ‘OK, I’m probably
going to die anyway, so let’s go.’ I’d rather die being active, trying to get
him down, than simply sit in the corner and be shot. Either you sit down and
you die or you get up and you die. It was really nothing more than that.”
How to
Fight an Active Shooter
So you’ve made the decision
that running and hiding are no longer options and that fighting is your last
recourse. What’s the best way to fight an active shooter?
If you’re armed yourself,
there are certain techniques you should employ in returning fire. A tutorial on
how to take down a gunman lies outside the purview of this post, and must be
practiced in the real world.
If you’re not armed, real world practice in hand-to-hand
fighting will be an enormous asset, not only in giving you concrete skills to
employ, but in offering you a greater comfort level with violence and a
confidence in taking action. It’s not a coincidence that Spencer Stone — a U.S.
Airman who was the first of the 3 Americans to rush the train-bound terrorist
and choked him out while his buddies gave him a beat down — was trained
in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Stone
unequivocally attributed his training in martial arts to his survival, adding
that even a cursory knowledge of self-defense is highly beneficial: “I 100%
believe that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu saved my life at that moment. Every move I
used on him was very, very basic — you can learn in five minutes. If we had a
course like that in the Air Force for people to learn basic moves, it could
help anyone in a situation like that.”
But even if you’re the most
average of average joes — you’ve got neither a gun nor a black belt — you
should still attempt to take on a gunman as a last resort, keeping these
principles in mind:
Understand your advantages. Most violent gunmen work under the assumption that because they
have a gun, people will do what they want or just hide. They don’t expect
someone to come charging after them. As we discussed in our article on the OODA Loop, an
important part of winning any fight is resetting or disrupting your opponent’s
loop. As former US Air Marshal Curtis Sprague told me, you want your opponent
to have an “uhhhh…” moment. By doing the unexpected (attacking), Sprague argues
that “you’re disrupting the gunman’s OODA Loop which slows him down — even if
it’s just a few seconds — and gives you more time to complete your OODA Loop and win the battle.”
So simply charging your
gunman puts you at an advantage because he’s definitely not expecting it.
In 100 Deadly Skills, Emerson
notes another advantage to keep in mind: “a gun can only be shot in one
direction at any one time.” If you approach the shooter from behind or from the
side, it’s going to be very hard for him to shoot you. What’s more, if you
attack the shooter as a team (which you should), he can’t shoot everyone at the
same time. An attack by multiple people, from multiple angles, will be
difficult for a lone gunman to fend off.
Be aggressive and violent. This isn’t the time for pussy footing. Once you decide to fight,
attack with violence and aggression. Alek Skarlatos grabbed the train-bound
terrorist’s rifle and pounded him repeatedly in the head with its muzzle. This
kind of violence may not be pleasant to contemplate, but remember, old
ingrained norms like never hurting others go out the window in a crisis;
victory will go to the swift and relentless. Use lethal force, and don’t stop
fighting until you’re dead or the shooter stops moving.
Control the weapon and then control the shooter. The sooner you can get the weapon out of the shooter’s hands,
without endangering others, the better. Without his gun, he can’t shoot anymore.
Once the weapon has been secured, turn your attention to completely containing
the perpetrator. Keep in mind every fight is different. Sometimes you’re not
going to be in a position to secure the weapon first, so your priority would be
to inflict as much violence as possible on the shooter until you can get the
gun away from him.
Even if you can’t get the gun completely out of the attacker’s
hands, do what you can to control it. Grab the gun so that you can exercise
some influence over where it’s pointed. If the shooter has a semi-automatic
pistol, use this tip I picked up from UFC fighter and Army Ranger Tim Kennedy
at the Atomic Athlete Vanguard. Grab the
barrel as hard as you can. First, this allows you to control where the gun is
pointed. And second, if the gun does fire, it will prevent the slide from going
back and chambering another round, thus preventing the shooter from re-firing.
Use improvised weapons. Just because you don’t have a gun, doesn’t mean you don’t have a
weapon. A weapon can multiply force and almost anything in your environment can
be turned into one: chairs, fire extinguishers, umbrellas, belts, coffee mugs.
Heck, even a pen can be used as an improvised weapon.
Throw stuff at the shooter.
Even if it doesn’t disable him, you’re creating hesitation which will give you
more time to get closer to end the fight. Remember, disrupt that loop!
If it’s available, use items that can blind the shooter: flash a high-beam tactical flashlight in his eyes, spray a fire extinguisher or chemicals in his
face, or throw a pot of scalding hot coffee his way. Be creative! Once the
shooter is disoriented, rush him and take him down.
Work as a team. The more
people you can get to help you in attacking the shooter, the better your
chances of ending the ordeal with fewer casualties. But remember, most people’s
natural reaction in these sorts of situations is to not do anything. You’ll
need to be assertive and take the lead. Courage is contagious.
Conclusion
While active shootings are
increasing, they’re still rare. We shouldn’t be cowered in our homes in fear.
But there’s no downside to being prepared. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do
to survive a shooting; you’re in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and you’re
killed without warning. But you may get a chance to act, and will only have
seconds to figure out what to do. Your stress will be through the roof and the
situation will be utter chaos. If you hope in that moment to be able to protect
your life and the lives of others, ready yourself now and have a plan of action
wherever you go.
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