I received an advance copy of Left of Bang from Black Irish Books. The book was written by Patrick Van Horne and Jason A. Riley, couple of U.S. Marine Corps officers. The book contains a prescription to help their Marines stay safe in war zones. It starts by justifying its use by combat troops then introduces the concept of combat profiling and concludes with applications.
Combat profiling is a method of increasing the precision of situational awareness. It is thus very applicable to everyday life; as Jason Hanson pointed out in his Spy Secrets book. The advantage to reading this book is learning the specific attributes of human behavior. These will help you create a personal model of what’s normal for where you find yourself. Once you have the background firmly in your mind, it’s easier to spot aberrations. While not every aberration is a threat, they are where you are going to have the highest return for the investment of your awareness.
The Book’s name comes from timeline graphs. In a timeline graph it’s typical to draw time increasing from left to right; being left of bang means that bad things (the bang) have not yet happened. The goal is to keep on the left side of bang by doing what Jason advocated; get off of the X. Take action, be proactive. But to do so you need to learn what to look for. What is normal for the location? Is the location normal right now? Where are the threats?
Combat profiling is made more precise because of human universals. The authors give nine universals of human behavior: 1) they are creatures of habit, 2) they are lazy, 3) they are lousy liars, 4) they will run, fight, or freeze, 5) they telegraph their intentions, 6) they are predictable, 7) they are not good at multitasking, 8) they are generally clueless, 9) they can’t do very many different things.
To make quick decisions you need to know what to look for. The authors identify six domains of the details of human behavior: 1) body language, 2) biometric cues, 3) use of space, 4) geographic familiarity, 5) visual language, and 6) the collective mood.
Definition of all of these terms is beyond what I want to do here (read the book). Left of Bang gives very specific examples of what to look for in each of these domains, and how deviations from the normal might be masked. For me the section on body language (kinesics) was fascinating. Since reading the book I have witnessed the multitasking behavior failure in many life situations. Heck, I’ve fallen prey to it myself. In trying to do two things at once I divide my attention between them; the transitions are frequently awkward. I’ll lose my train of thought or miss something and have to repeat an action. In fact it’s getting harder as I get older. This is the same stuttering behavior that the pick-pocket at the mail has to go through. But he is likely much more practiced at his transitions. That makes practicing the techniques even more important.
One of the exercises from the book is to find a public place, then using the domains of human behavior chart the normal activity you observe. While observing note the following (there are more in the book):
- Who seems familiar with the area?
- Who has access to the anchor points? What are they wearing?
- Who appears uncomfortable, dominant, interested, or uninterested?
- Whose movement appears aggressive?
- Whose behavior appears unnatural or distracted?
Remember, in observing these things and taking notes you are going to appear in some of these classes to other observers. Not to be melodramatic, but be careful, there are persons of evil intent that may be watching you, the watcher. And they may be more practiced.
The techniques described in this book are complicated and take practice to become a part of your unconscious awareness. Unless you grew up like Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear) you will need education on what to do and practice doing it the right way.
Read this book and practice the techniques, they just might keep you left of bang, and save your life or the life of someone you love.