That's the advice of Karl Denninger when confronted by an attacker such as the terrorist at the Orlando night club on Saturday evening. It ties in with what I had to say on the subject.
The reason for this is simple: If you are already dead then any act you undertake can only improve the outcome. It cannot make it worse, because the worst possible outcome has already happened.
You must accept and internalize the fact that the cops will not save you; they will, however, dutifully inventory your dead body 12 hours later.
. . .
We used to, as Americans, face this reality on a regular basis. We had a large percentage of our population that were drafted and sent to war from time to time and faced bullets whizzing by their heads for months or years, with many of their friends falling to the ones that found their mark. We had a frontier where you faced snakes, Indians (interested in your scalp as you were, from their point of view, invading their land!) and simple starvation or running out of water, and more than a few succumbed to one of the above. Disease felled even more, regularly. There was no such thing as a "safe space" nor the idiot "progressives" demanding and putting forward same as "rights"; that is utter crap yet it has massively contributed to the "oh my God hide in the bathroom!" mentality.
Simply put you must individually perform this exercise, starting right now. You must be prepared on a mental basis to adopt the "I'm dead" belief and position in mind, body and soul if confronted with such a situation.
. . .
Because ... when that jackass shows up if he doesn't spend one of his first magazine's rounds on you there will be a short period of time, just a few seconds, where you have the ability to disrupt his attack and you must seize that moment and attempt to do exactly that.
There's much more at the link. Go read, and ponder. He's right.
Peter
13 comments:
Some can and will step up, most... won't...
Definitely something to ponder on.
It's definitely one of those: You won't know what you will do until it really happens.
But even then....
Fortune favors the prepared mind.
Karl more or less says what was said in comments on the previous post, but more forcefully, without pulling any punches. I like to think I'd step up if I were in such a situation, especially if I was with family or friends.
I've always said, if everybody would just grab a stool and throw at these guys, they'd probably be put out of business long enough for some folks to grab them. Of course that doesn't stop a bomber, at least not USUALLY.
Very good advice. A long time ago in a land far away I walked into a room with three bad guys well armed. My only weapon was a parachute knife. I knew I was dead and suddenly anger overcame me. I was determined to take at least one out before they killed me. I walked out alive because I fought hard. The lesson learned is to fight until your last breath. What do you have to loose?
Sound advice. It reminds me of my favorite lines from African Queen with Humphrey Bogart:
Rose: Don't be worried, Mr. Allnut.
Charlie: Oh, I ain't worried, Miss. Gave myself up for dead back where we started.
"the time of my soul leaving this earth was determined even before i was born. why then, should i fear it." t.j. "stonewall" jackson. he went on to say that only when men realize they are going to die can they do the terrible things required of them in battle.
My back and left knee are pretty well shot, but that means I have a sturdy cane with me all the time. Plus at least one knife. Add a vivid imagination that I more than willing to use for "what would I do" exercises, and I have a greater-than-zero, if small, chance.
Fifty dead and fifty wounded... if those hundred people, or 95 of them after he shot five and anybody with eyes and a brain could see what was happening, had attacked, even bare handed, the large majority of them would have left the club on their own feet.
A chair, used lion-tamer style, is a pretty effective weapon, and might even deflect a bullet if you're lucky
If, at any point in my military career, someone had given me orders to go, by myself, into a crowded building and just start killing unarmed people...?
Yeah. My response, having a pretty good idea of how that crap usually ends for the military side of things, would have been "With all due respect, sir... Not only no, but f**k no...".
And, yet... Because of the passive nature of the public, these thrill killers get away with it, every damn time. The Virginia Tech killer? He should have gotten a metallic table leg to the head, as he passed through a classroom door along his path of destruction. He should have expired at the hands of someone beating him to death with an improvised weapon, because that is precisely what would likely happen to some lone soldier trying to clear a building by himself in a combat zone; the civilians, or "Mob, one each" can soak up every round you have on you, and still manage to swamp you and tear you to bits with their hands and teeth. And, yet... Every one of these thrill killers manages to do his thing successfully until the police or other security forces intervene. What should be happening is that the cops show up to find the local "mob" sitting on top of a pile of bruised meat and entrails, having swarmed and crushed the bastard.
Seriously--I cannot fathom why these people passively react to the attacks as though the thrill killers possess magical weapons that they can't resist. You start shooting up a crowded nightclub, that ought to be a cue for the crowds of people therein to swarm your stupid ass and stomp you into the floor. Especially for these "lone wolf" types--How many people can he get, if the mass is determined to take him down? Unless he manages to get himself into commanding position with his back to a wall, or something, he's going to be vulnerable to attack from the flank or rear, and the idiot is going to have to switch magazines or weapons at some point... Take his ass down. He can't kill all of you, and one armed man against a mob of hundreds is literally dead meat, should that mass of humans realize their power.
The problem is that we've trained everyone to passivity; the response to these things ought to be a hell of a lot different than it is. Guy pulls out gun? Fine; everyone in the club rushes his stupid ass and stomps him into the floor. He'll get a couple of you, but the raw aggression of the crowd can easily take him down, if it is present.
Frankly, were you to present what this guy or that idiot at Virginia Tech did as a proposed military operation...? One fool with a gun, going into a crowded building, to try to kill as many people as possible? Yeah... I'd term that a pretty clear case of "Suicide Mission", and be telling my commander to go piss up a rope. One guy with a gun or two up against a few hundred people? Yeah... Properly, the news reports ought to be discussing the difficulty in identifying the idiot from what little genetic material would be left after the crowd got done with him, because, as I point out, he could easily have been turned into a grease stain by that group of people, were they an enraged mob instead of a crowd of victims.
We need to start framing these situations a lot differently, and dealing with them more appropriately. Frankly, these thrill killers ought to be terrified of what could happen to them at the hands of a mob. God knows I am, knowing what one can do to even heavily armed and fully supported combat troops. That's a mission I'd never undertake, unless I had no other choice, and my commanders convinced me of its necessity, because I doubt I or my men would be coming back.
Well said.
Reminds me of Bushido. Same notion I came across over and over back when I was reading anything I could find about Samurai. (Probably how the kamikazi pilots thought in WWII, I suppose. But it's a psychological tool, can be used by good guys or bad guys.)
I was carrying a gun for pay back then. I remember the idea gave me a certain peace of mind when I thought about worse coming to worse. So far, hasn't yet.
Funny how I kind of forgot it since then, til seeing this blog post reminded me. Thanks for that.
Something from ancient Greek or Roman times: The one hope of the damned is to not hope to be saved. Same meaning.
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