Staying Left of Bang
I’m sure you’ve heard it: “situational awareness” is the mother of self-defense.
But those words have almost become more of a joke these days. You’re walking down the street with your friends and one of them has their face buried in their cellphone. Not paying attention, they walk into a light pole. Everybody laughs and someone inevitably says, “Situational awareness!”
But the term I prefer to use when I teach self-defense is borrowed from the United States Marine Corps: STAY LEFT OF BANG. Stay Left of Bang was developed by Marine General James Mattis for the Combat Hunter Program — a program to recognize threats based on the universal patterns of human behavior.
To understand this better in civilian terms, take out a piece of paper and draw a line across it. In the middle of the line write “bang.” That is the negative event that you want to avoid - a mugging, an assault, a car crash, a terrorist bombing, being bitten by a stray pit bull. So if you’re to the left of the “bang,” you haven’t encountered the event yet. If you are to the right of “bang,” well, that would mean you are either hurt, or worse, you’re dead. Our goal is to obviously “Stay Left of Bang.” Now what’s important to understand is that this concept goes beyond just awareness. You must develop the ability to determine threats.
You do this by establishing a baseline for what is normal, and what is an anomaly. The baseline is what would be considered “normal” behavior under the present circumstances. Of course, this requires that you consider the culture you find yourself in, because different cultures can have different “normal” behaviors. But assuming we’re talking about any city here in America, then there is a baseline for the environment, the situation, the patterns of movement and the behaviors of individuals. Often we don’t pay attention to these circumstances because they are ingrained in us.
So an anomaly would be any variation from the baseline of your environment, situation, or an individual(s) behaviors; basically, anything that seems out of place. More precisely, an anomaly would be something that should happen but doesn’t, or something that does happen but shouldn’t. Learning to recognize anomalies will enable you to predict events and violence before they happen. Going with the something that should happen but doesn’t, let’s use this example: Secret Service Agents follow the President as he/she goes to greet a crowd of supporters.
Normal behavior for the crowd would be people smiling, wanting to shake his/her hand, taking photos or filming the event with their phone. The anomaly would be the man approaching who is not smiling and does not have his cell phone out, but instead has his hand inside his coat pocket. If the man were a supporter, he should be behaving the way the rest of the people are, excited to see the President.
Now let’s use this extraordinary example: It’s summertime and the temperature is easily in the 80’s. You’re in the security line at the airport to go on vacation in Hawaii. Everyone is busy looking at their phones, watching how slow the line is moving, talking with their family and friends. Some people look at their watch, and seem irritated. That’s all normal behavior in an airport security line.
But up ahead in the line, you see a man who is wearing a thick, heavy coat. That is anomaly #1. The man now looks behind him, his eyes scanning the terminal. You notice that he’s sweating. Well, your first thought is probably, “No wonder that dummy is sweating, he’s wearing a coat in the middle of the summer! ” But what you should be asking yourself is, “WHY is this guy wearing a heavy coat in the middle of the summer? If he’s that hot, why doesn’t he just take it off and put in his bags?” Oh wait…. HE DOESN’T HAVE ANY BAGS. Okay, well why doesn’t he take his coat off and drape it over his arm? That is all anomaly #2. The man turns back, and it looks like he’s touching his chest. You should now look to see if he’s holding something in his hand. He is, but you can’t make out what it is. The man touches his chest again, as if checking to see if something is there. That is anomaly #3, thereby enacting the Combat Rule of Three: When you observe three anomalies or indicators, you must take action.
So at this point, you need to get the hell out of line with your family or friends, and immediately go notify the airport police. When the man yells, “Allahu Akbar!” it will be too late. He’ll depress the thumb trigger on the detonating device in his hand, and the explosive vest that he kept touching under his coat will go off killing all those around him.
Now let me give you a personal example: After a day of training with Israel’s Counter Terrorism Academy, Caliber 3 in May 2022 in Efrat, a settlement in the West Bank, one of the instructors took me back to Jerusalem where I went wandering around the Old City for a couple of hours. Afterwards, I went to the train station to get back to Tel Aviv.
I sat down, and moments later a young man, probably in his late teens or early twenties got on the train. He put a very large book bag down in the seat before me, then moved off towards the front of the train. What immediately set me on edge was he looked very ordinary, and there was a bit of a rush to his movements. Sitting directly across from me were five Israelis. I looked over at them as they continued to talk, completely oblivious to what had just happened. I was somewhat shocked. I mean, this was Israel where the threat of a terrorist attack is omnipresent.
After a second I leaned over towards them and said, “Atta medaber Anglit?” That’s Hebrew for “Do you speak English?” They all looked over at me with somewhat irritated looks as I had interrupted their conversation, but a large man in the group said, “Yes, I speak English. What’s the problem?” I responded, “Do you know that a young kid just came on the train and set a book bag down on the seat in front of me, and walked off?” The large man leaned over and saw the book bag. His eyes enlarged, and he said something in Hebrew to the other man and three ladies in his group, and they immediately got off the train. The large man looked around and said something in Hebrew to the others that were in our area, and everybody got up in a hurry to de-board as well. He nodded after his friends and said, “They’ll notify the police.” I nodded, but the two of us stayed there. The large man looked me in the eye, and gave me a slight nod. I understood that we were not letting anyone else enter our train car.
Not less than two minutes, several police officers boarded the train. One of the police officers told me and the large man to get off the train. But as I began to move, I saw the young kid fast approaching down the aisle towards us. Calmly I said to the first officer, “That’s him.” Two of the officers drew their handguns and pointed them at the young man who immediately stopped and put his hands up in the air and froze, scared to death. “Is this your bag?!” The officer then repeated it in Hebrew.
The young man responded in English, “Yes, that’s my bag. I was just going up to try and find my friends on the first train.” The cop ordered the young man to stay put, then told his partner to examine the book bag. The second officer gently stood the bag up in the seat. I looked at the kid, and he wasn’t acting the way I would expect someone with a bomb in their bag to behave — like they were about to die a martyr. I watched the second officer inches away from me slowly unzip the bag, and begin to take out school books. He cleared the bag, and there was no bomb. Everyone let out a sigh of relief, but the first police officer laid into the kid, scolding him for walking away from his book bag. The young man profusely apologized to all of us.
The police thanked me, and asked where I was from. “I’m American,” I said. They did a double take. “Do you have training? Why were you so alert to this?” asked the first officer. “America is a dangerous place,” I responded. And just like the Counter Terrorism instructors and the IDF special forces soldier I was there to train with, the police officers gave me a small smirk. A sort of, “Yeah, right. Like America is dangerous.” Funny how other parts of the world have this perception that all of America is Disneyland.
I will finish with the application of Stay Left of Bang in the most simplest of terms. Your friend asks you if you want to go to the protests today (as I write this, global news is dominated by the war between Israel and Hamas). Knowing that violence often happens at protests or rallies of any kind, you simply say, “No, thank you,” thereby perfectly applying the concept of Stay Left of Bang.
Not even putting yourself in that situation in the first place, or any other situations where the occurrence of violence is even slightly possible, is a much more effective strategy than simply using “Situational Awareness.” You are “Staying Left of Bang.”
A Google search of Stay Left of Bang will provide several results, but if you really want to dive deeper into this, I would suggest reading Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life (2014) by Patrick Van Horne and Jason A. Riley.
Stay safe,
Geoff Meed
