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| Produced by the Safe Travel Institute in association with Safe Harbor Publishing. VIGILANCE: Situational Awareness ?People only see what they are prepared to see? - Emerson In this issue, we continue the journey to expand your awareness and understanding of the legitimate threats that exist in our increasingly globalized world. Having explored the concept of Knowledge as related to safe travel in our first issue, let us know turn our attention to the idea Vigilance. You drive to work the same route as you have hundreds of times before. When you arrive at your office, you realize you don?t remember making any conscious decisions. You don?t recall seeing red lights at the intersection. Braking to a halt; Changing lanes; Turning corners; Merging with traffic. Yet you made it there safely. Behavioral scientists label such activity, ?discrimination without awareness.? This ability to make distinctions in our environment while also making productive choices is an adaptation that promotes cognitive efficiency. In most cases, the mind sees exactly what it expects to see (e.g., the correct off-ramp or the entrance to the parking garage next to your office). What you don?t consciously see are the hundreds of other cars on the road or the pedestrians walking along and through traffic. What you likely also wouldn?t see if you were making these daily trips in a foreign country is something far more important: surveillance! If you become a target of a terrorist or criminal organization, you will almost always come under extended surveillance to establish a baseline of you daily routines and assess your vulnerabilities. And without situational awareness you won?t notice this is taking place, possibly until it is too late! How important is it for an individual to effectively discern the fact that they are under surveillance? Consider this: analysis of past incidents affirm that upwards of 92% of terrorist attacks are successful if not detected during the surveillance phase. While there are concrete actions one can take to evade capture, escape detention, or protect themselves from assault, they are far more problematic than preventing the attack in the first place! A behavior that can be exceptionally efficient under one set of circumstances can be enormously inefficient ? even dangerous ? under another. Whenever you find yourself in a potentially threatening environment, you need to make careful discriminations with heightened awareness. As Emerson once wrote, ?people only see what they are prepared to see.? If you are unprepared to see evidence of threat, then you will most certainly not see it. And if you don?t see it?you cannot respond appropriately. Situational awareness involves making a conscious assessment of your surroundings and making reasoned determinations about the potential threats that might exist. It is not paranoia (although, as they say, even paranoid people have true enemies). Sports provide many excellent examples of situational awareness. The wide receiver reaching to catch the football is primarily focusing on the ball. At the same time, however, he is also monitoring his position relative to the edge of the field or the goal line and the proximity of the defensive backs closing in on him. While a relatively complex activity, the ability to focus on a primary activity while simultaneously monitoring peripheral information is a rapidly learned skill. One of our natural allies in this is a part of the brain known as the reticular activating system (RAS). The primary function of the RAS is to filter out the literally millions of bits of less important environmental data that constantly surround us and enable our conscious minds to stay focused on a single activity. Through training and experience, we can essentially ?tune? the RAS to pick-up selected bits of data (e.g., the flash of a camera taking our photograph, the suspicious individual standing near our office building as we pass by), and bring that information into our conscious awareness for more critical evaluation. The ultimate quality of the firewall you maintain against potential threats is the quality and consistency of the effort invested in your own defensive surveillance. As Machiavelli advised the prince, ?Only those means of security are good, are certain, are lasting are those depending upon yourself and on your own vigor.? Key Principles The fundamental principle in effective vigilance is to perceptively balance prudence with paranoia. Similarly, the fundamental principle in situational awareness, a critical sub-component of vigilance, is knowledge of your environment. There are a number of steps one can take to both increase awareness and reduce exposure. These include the following: - Quickly make an accurate assessment of what is ?normal? for your environment. This can include traffic and pedestrian flows at given times during the day, the type of clothing considered acceptable in particular areas, and both early and late hours for activity on the street. - Recognize what is considered ?abnormal? for the area. Do people spend long hours on public telephones? How common is it for people to linger on the street or at outdoor cafes? - When frequenting eating or drinking establishments, adopt the ?gunfighter?s habit? of routinely sitting with your back against a wall, facing toward the entrance. - Considering the principle of balancing prudence with paranoia, be at least mildly suspicious of all new ?friends? your make, especially those who appear to have sought you out. - To maintain your situational awareness, you need to remain alert and diligent. As such, it is recommended that you carefully watch your alcohol intake. Additionally, it is ill-advised to leave your food or drink unattended even for a minute. - Where possible, don?t venture out alone. Not only is there safety in numbers, but also an extra set of eyes and ears can aid immeasurably in detecting surveillance or other untoward interest in you. The corroboration of a friend or colleague can also help overcome the rationalizing that can undermine your early efforts in vigilance. Terrorists will always look to gain the best possible advantage. The individual who moves obliviously through their turf will quickly attract their attention and move higher on the list of possible targets than those who exhibit greater awareness of their surroundings. In summary, the time and effort you invest in learning and employing the skills of situational awareness will pay generous dividends, even those you may never recognize. For every terrorist assault and abduction attempt, there are hundreds that aren?t attempted largely due the fact that the target was simply too difficult to observe and therefore impossible to predict. Programs at the National Hostage Survival Training Center include an in-depth examination of how to use enhanced situational awareness to your advantage. Classroom instruction supplemented by on-the-street practical exercises can help you learn to skillfully ?watch the watchers.? Join us next time when we take an in-depth look at our third mission element? Strategy! yemek tarifleri |