(The following text is a reprint of an article issued by REACT's training division)
Bodyguard in your pocket: part 1
I’d like you to visualise a scenario. You arrive home after work, park your car in the driveway and rush inside to get ready for a social function later that evening. Typically you would have pulled your car into the garage, but you’re running late, so you leave the car on the driveway and rush inside to change.
By the time you are ready to leave, it’s 7:00 pm and you have to walk to your car in the dark. That makes you a little nervous, so your reach into your pocket/handbag and take out your SureFire Tactical Light. With your SureFire now in hand, you leave the house and start making your way to your car.
Your SureFire is far more than just a light source. It is an extremely versatile defensive tool that can be employed in number of different ways to give you a survival edge during various different phases of an attack.
Let’s use the simple scenario above to cover some basic tactics using your SureFire.
Prevention
The first question to ask yourself is, “Where is an attack most likely to come from?” The rule here is simple: Attacks are most likely to come from the darkest areas in your immediate surroundings. We call them ‘dark holes’ and attackers love to use them to conceal themselves until the opportune moment when they can rush you and benefit from the element of surprise and your resulting shock and panic. At REACT we have a saying: “Assume that all ‘dark holes’ contain threats”. It is an assumption that has saved lives and I strongly recommend that you take it to heart.
You need to make a conscious decision to illuminate the ‘dark holes’ around you when moving around at night. In this particular scenario that means shining a short burst of light into the ‘dark holes’ in and around your driveway and garden as you are making your way to your car. Once you get used to using your SureFire to check ‘dark holes’, you will find that it starts becoming an instinctive reaction and you will find yourself checking those inevitable dark areas in parking lots, near ATM’s, when arriving home to a dark house etc. Once you realise that your SureFire gives you the power to make those potentially dangerous ‘dark holes’ instantly disappear; you will take to doing it all the time. It’s kind of addictive!
Facing a possible threat
So back to our scenario. You’ve scanned each ‘dark hole’ in your garden with a short, intense burst of light and so far all is well when you suddenly catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of your eye. Your turn to see the silhouette of a person standing their in the dark on your driveway. At this point you have no idea what this person wants or whether they pose a threat or not.
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Your immediate response should be to blast the stranger with the beam from your SureFire. Aim for the face. SureFire designs their beams to have an extremely bright concentrated center spot that is surrounded by a wide, soft corona of light. You want to get the center spot directly into the face of the stranger, while the surrounding light allows you to see peripheral weapons, people approaching from the sides etc.
If the stranger does not simply run at this point (which is very common) he will typically raise his hands in front of his face to shield his eyes from the intense light. What’s good about this instinctive reaction is that it brings any weapons that he may be holding into plain view for you to see. Your next move will be based on whether the stranger is holding a weapon or not.
Flash and move!
If you see a weapon in the stranger’s hands then you employ a technique that we, at REACT, call “Flash and Move”. What this means is that you simply release the momentary-on switch on the tail-cap of your SureFire, that you were depressing with your thumb. This kills the beam of light. The instant you have done this, you run for safety. In other words you flashed an extremely bright beam into your opponent’s face (eyes), saw a weapon, instantly killed the beam and moved.
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Put yourself in the attacker’s shoes for a moment. The guy thought he was sneaking up on you in the dark and had the element of surprise on his side. The next thing he knows he is blinded by an incredibly bright light. He instinctively flinches and brings his hands up, while he is trying to decide what to do next. Before he can even process his next move the light disappears as fast as it appeared. He strains to try and locate his intended victim in the dark but he is temporarily blind as his pupils, which constricted instantly in response to the bright light, take time to dilate and readjust to the dark again. By the time he regains some measure of night vision his intended victim is nowhere to be seen….Game over!
But won’t the attacker immediately shoot at the light, you ask? Reports from the street suggest not and it makes sense. This guy is not an assassin who is simply out to kill you. He is a criminal who typically needs to make various demands on you to hand over valuables or start your car or accompany him inside to open your safe etc. If his goal was simply to kill you outright he would already be shooting and not approaching slowly in the dark. He needs to confront you, get you to submit and follow his demands.
Many of our regular readers have purchased SureFires. If you already own a SureFire, I strongly suggest that you go outside at night, with a family member and practice the “Flash and Move” technique explained above. Make sure that you experience the technique from both the attacker and the intended victim’s point of view. You will soon learn how fast you can employ the “Flash and Move” technique if your SureFire is in your hand as it should be during potentially dangerous times at night. More importantly, you will also get to experience the devastating psychological effect of being the receiving end of the technique…And remember when you’ve just been blasted and you’re trying to regain your night vision…You knew it was coming!
Flash and control!
Let’s go back to the point when you first see the stranger’s silhouette and immediately blast him in the face with the beam from your SureFire. If, at this point, you see that he is not holding a weapon, then you are going to employ a technique that we call “Flash and Control”. This technique simply involves you keeping the intense beam constantly directed into the stranger’s face while you question him or shout commands at him. Once again it is remarkably effective.
From the potential attacker’s point of view, the “Flash and Control” technique effectively combines the physical impact of temporary blindness with the resulting psychological impact of knowing that the person (or persons) behind the blinding light can see every move that you are making. On the other hand, on the receiving end of the light, you cannot see how many people you are facing, whether they are retrieving defensive weapons or even whether they are moving towards or away from you. It has been proven time and again that blinding a suspect with intense light while you question them or shout commands at them is a very effective way to break their morale and take control of an unknown entity.
Again, I strongly suggest going out side at night and using your SureFire to role-play the “Flash and Control” technique from the potential attacker as well as the intended victim’s point of view. It’s an ‘eye-opening’ experience! Do it as a family, I assure you that you will suffer no permanent visual impairment. The effects of exposure to the intense light will wear off in a minute or so.
Strobing
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The last SureFire technique that I want to share with you this month, is one of my personal favorites! “Strobing” involves you activating and de-activating your SureFire in rapid succession, while the beam is directed into your opponent’s face. The sensitive, momentary-on switch situated on the tail-cap of all SureFire models was specifically designed for this type of rapid transition between intense white light and pitch darkness. Of course a similar technique can be used very effectively for emergency signaling but it’s far more fun to ‘strobe’ a potential attacker into sensory overload! Here’s how it works…
In the above scenario your potential attacker has been waiting for you in a ‘dark hole’ near your driveway. His pupils have fully dilated to let in the maximum amount of light, in an attempt to see as well as possible in the dark. Clever of our eyes to adapt that way. However, shining an intense white light into these dilated pupils is extremely disconcerting and results in a measure of sensory overload. In other words our bad guy’s brain kicks out of attack mode for a second as it tries to deal with the shock factor.
Of course the human body is extremely adaptive and the pupils will immediately begin constricting to block out the harsh light. Unfortunately just as this happens you release the switch and everything is instantly pitch black again. As a result your opponents pupils start rapidly dilating again to adapt. You give it a second; just long enough for the dilation process to start and then blast him again! You can experiment with different strobing intervals but I find that about one burst per second is enough to completely overwhelm just about any opponent!
Of course, you don’t have to be standing stationary to use the strobing technique. You can combine it with either the “Flash and Move” technique or the “Flash and Control” technique with amazing results. Don’t take my word for it…try this for yourself and you will realise the power of these simple techniques. And…when you’re finished giving each other’s pupils a workout…drop me an email and tell me what you think.
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I have included a picture taken during a recent REACT seminar of a so-called "attacker" being blasted by a top-of-the-line SureFire M6 Special Operations Series light. Admittedly, this model is a little larger than pocket size but it’s still far smaller than a 2 D-cell torch and it produces 500 lumens of light output. That’s 33 times brighter than a normal torch and capable of concentrating a beam at a distance of 400 meters. The effect has to be experienced to be understood!
In closing, I’m afraid that non-SureFire owners will find that any torch that produces less than 60 lumens of light output will simply not have the same effect. Careful studies by law-enforcement and military agencies in the U.S. have shown that 60 lumens is about the minimum threshold for a tactical light. That’s about 4.5 times brighter than a typical 2 D-cell torch. That means that you’re pretty much limited to your 5kg million-candlepower hunting spot or a 100-gram, palm-size SureFire. It’s a bit inconvenient to carry the hunting spot around in your pocket though…