SureFire Torches and Flashlights

(The following text is a reprint of an article issued by REACT's training division)

Winning the light fight

I have made the statement before…. the majority of violent attacks occur at night. Despite this fact, South Africans seem to have very little understanding of how light can work for or against you during a potential attack. The truth is that the correct use of light can really tip the scales in your favour when it comes to outsmarting violent attackers.

Although the correct use of light is far easier to teach in person by visually demonstrating different lighting scenarios, I would like to cover some of the most basic principles in this month’s newsletter. The following principles should enable you to assess carefully the effectiveness of the lighting in and around your own home.

Right up front, you need to accept that it is very difficult to defend yourself from attackers that you can’t see coming. That’s why attackers love waiting for, or sneaking up on, their victims under the cover of darkness. The secret is that the principle works in reverse as well. From your attacker’s point of view, it is also very difficult to attack a victim that can’t be seen clearly! So, in a perfect world, you want to create a scenario that allows you to see potential attackers approaching at night, while making it difficult for them to see you clearly.

Principle 1:

Whenever possible, try to stay in the dark and force your attacker into the light.

Most people leave lights on at various times for security reasons. Unfortunately, the way many people use light is not only ineffective but actually works in their potential attacker’s favour!

On your driveway:

I bet that most of you leave a light on, on the driveway when you are out at night. The idea being that the driveway will be well lit when you return. I’m also willing to bet that the vast majority of your driveways are lit by a single light, mounted on the wall, between two garage doors. This light typically points away from the house directly at the centre of the driveway.

This set-up can be dangerous! What you are really doing is creating a situation in which you have a bright light shining into your eyes and lighting you up when you pull into your driveway. Also, that one light will never be able to light up all the dark areas (we call them ‘dark holes’ on our seminars) around the rest of the property. ‘Dark holes’ are created by trees, shrubs, walls, etc., and are almost impossible to eliminate entirely. Potential attackers could therefore be waiting in the ‘dark holes’ and you will not be able to see them because you’re looking from a light area into a ‘dark hole’, which appears completely black.

While you can’t see the potential attackers in this scenario, your driveway light is lighting you up like a Christmas tree and you are clearly visible to the would-be attackers. They can see how many people they are going to have to deal with. They can see whether you have weapons or other personal protection tools in your hands. They can see when you are looking in their direction and when you are looking away. All of this information gives them the element of surprise and a potentially deadly advantage.

At your front door:

A similar scenario is common at your front door. Most people have a wall-mounted light right next to the front door and inadequate lighting around the rest of the garden. This scenario again leaves you being clearly lit up, while standing at your front door. Attackers, on the other hand, can watch you from the ‘dark holes’ around the garden and wait for the opportune moment to launch their attack. They are looking from a dark environment into a lighter environment, which is ideal. You are left trying to see into the ‘dark holes’ with a bright light right next to your face, which is bad! The bottom line is that you are now at a serious tactical disadvantage.

In your house:

People routinely tell me on my seminars that they leave some lights on in their houses at night when they are asleep. Typically, they leave the passage, bathroom, and living room (TV room) lights on and turn off the lights in the peripheral rooms such as the lounge, dinning room and study. When asked to explain this lighting set-up I am told by the homeowners that they want to be able to see intruders in the house clearly, if they hear something go ‘bump’ in the night. Some people say that they want to be able to see clearly should they have to run down the passage to fetch their children in an emergency.

Again, this lighting set-up is far from ideal. It creates a scenario that has you moving around in a well-lit area, while intruders can easily duck into ‘dark rooms’ or ‘dark holes’ in your house to avoid detection. From this position, they can see you clearly but you can’t see them.

In your car:

Just about every car on the road has its interior lights set to switch on automatically when the ignition is turned off. That may be very handy in countries with no appreciable violent crime as it allows the driver to find his personal effects before getting out. In South Africa, automatically activated interior lights instantly disadvantage you by shining light into your eyes at close range. This prohibits you from seeing out into the darkness around your car to check for approaching threats. Potential attackers, on the other hand, can see you perfectly as you sit ‘under the spotlight’ in you car!

Principle 2:

If at all possible, don’t allow yourself to be backlit.

In any low-light scenario, you are most vulnerable when you are backlit. In other words, when you have a light behind you, creating a perfect silhouette for your attacker(s) to watch or shoot at. We’ve already established that you don’t want to be caught in a well-lit area looking into a ‘dark hole’, which may be occupied by attackers. Standing in a well-lit area looking into a ‘dark hole’ is bad. Being backlit while looking into a ‘dark hole’ is far worse!

With this in mind, let’s go back to the examples above. You arrive home on your driveway and get out of your car. You are immediately standing in a well-lit area, looking into ‘dark holes’ around your property for threats. That’s bad. There is also a strong chance that you are standing between the light on the wall between your garage doors and potential attackers in the ‘dark holes’, hereby backlighting you and creating a perfect silhouette. That’s very bad!

You then walk to your front door and, if you have any common sense whatsoever, you turn around to check that nobody is approaching from behind you. When you turn around and scan the driveway and garden, not only are you trying to see from a well-lit area into ‘dark holes’ but you have the light at the front door backlighting you as well. Very bad again!

One of the most common mistakes that people make with regards to backlighting is to leave their interior garage light on at night when opening the garage door. Whether you are leaving the garage or opening the door to put your car away, standing in front of your garage when the interior light is on is like painting a bull’s-eye on your chest! You are immediately backlit with your silhouette perfectly framed in the doorframe. (See picture).

A noise in the house wakes you in the early hours of the morning! You get out of bed and walk slowly down the passage and pear into the living room. This is not a particularly smart move but I bet that you’ve all done it...more than once. So there you are, standing at the end of the passage, peering into the living room. The room is filled with ‘dark holes’ and entrances to adjoining ‘dark rooms’ and once again you are being backlit by the passage and bathroom lights behind you and make a perfect target! (See picture).
Some solutions...

The basic principles are very clear. You want to experiment with the lighting in and around your house to create a situation where you can remain in a darker area and any potential attackers will have to approach from a well-lit area in order to get to you. In a perfect world you don’t just want to light up your attackers... you want to backlight them as well!

...when arriving home on your driveway:

I suggest installing wall-mounted lights that are directed outwards towards the ‘dark holes’ on either side of your driveway and leaving the actual driveway a bit darker by removing the typical light between the two garage doors. Your car headlights will light up the actual driveway when you arrive home for long enough to check if someone is waiting in the middle of your driveway, which is very rare. The outward angled lights will be shining into the areas alongside the driveway and hopefully into any potential attacker’s eyes rather than yours.

While we’re tipping the scales in your favour, let’s take things a step further. Although you should now be able to see any strangers approaching you on your driveway, they may still be difficult to pick out from the background. For example, an attacker may be wearing a green or brown jacket that blends into the wall or shrubs in the background.

What you really want to do is backlight your attacker as well. The silhouette that is created when a person approaches you, with a light behind him, is very eye-catching and practically impossible to miss. To backlight approaching strangers I suggest installing some lights in the far corners of your property. If your property is particularly large, you may need some additional lights. That way, if anyone approaches you once you have parked your car near the house or are walking to the front door he should be backlit.

It is very important that the lights that you use for backlighting are not too bright and that they do not project a beam towards the middle of the driveway or the front door. You don’t want to be using a powerful outdoor light with a reflector behind it. A simple round garden light with a fluorescent-type globe that creates a softer diffused light is good.

The idea is to backlight any approaching strangers and not to light yourself up or blind yourself. Another important point is to have these peripheral garden lights installed at about waist height. That way they are at the perfect height to create a silhouette should a man walk in front of them. Do not put them up on tall poles, as you will lose the backlighting effect. Finally, remember to set the interior lights in your car so that they do not come on automatically when you turn your ignition off.

The above arrangement should have you looking from a darker area into well-lit areas, as well as being able to see a clear backlit silhouette should anyone try to sneak up on you. A potential attacker on the other hand will be left looking from a light area into a darker area and will be backlit as well!

...when approaching your front door:

Do away with the typical front door light that is mounted right next to the door. Rather install reasonably powerful lights along the side of the house that are directed out into the garden to light up as many ‘dark holes’ as possible. You want to be able to turn around at your front door and look out into a well-lit garden from a darker area immediately in front of your front door. The lights are now shining into the eyes of anyone who tries to approach out of your garden. More importantly, you are not making the common mistake of being backlit by the light next to the front door.

 

As discussed above, you should ideally also have lower power ‘garden lights’ at the bottom corners of your garden, mounted at waist height, in order to backlight any potential attackers as well.

 

 

...in your house:

I strongly suggest leaving the lights in your passage and bathroom off at night. If your passage opens up into a living area, then leave the lights in the living area off as well! Then turn the lights on in the peripheral rooms adjoining the living room (dining room, lounge, study etc) and leave their doors open. This will create a very effective backlighting situation, making it easy for you to see any form of movement in the living room. You on the other hand will be looking out of a dark passage making it very difficult for intruders to see you.

Intruder entering your living room from 'dark hole' – from your point of view.		Intruder entering your living room, while backlit – from your point of view.

Remember that you should never actually enter the living room! Doing so would be a potentially fatal mistake. If you spot intruders in your living room, you should retreat immediately and lock yourself and your family in the safety of a bedroom (more on that in future issues). The idea here is simply that you are able to see whether there are intruders in you house without them seeing you. Here’s another tip: Wear dark sleeping clothes to bed at night. Black, navy blue and grey work best. It doesn’t help that you are standing in a dark passageway wearing snow-white pyjamas when you are trying to remain invisible!

If you hear a noise outside your house, please don’t do what so many people do and open the curtain to pear out into the garden with the house lights on behind you. This means that you are immediately backlit and present a perfect target. (See). If you hear a noise outside, you should turn out the interior lights, make sure that the outside lights are on (they should be on already) and then look out. Lighting principles dictate that you should be looking out from a dark area into a well-lit area hereby forcing your opponent(s) into the light and backlight them if possible.

What do I do if I find myself in a bad light situation?

As you can see, there is a lot that you can do by simply playing with the lights in and around your house. However, we live in the real world and the fact is that you can’t always control light conditions around you. You may have left the house during the day expecting to be home before nightfall and left the garden lights off, in which case you won’t be able to see into the ‘dark holes’ in your garden. To make matters worse, a nearby streetlight could be backlighting as you move around on your driveway.

You may have arrived home to a dark house in which case a streetlight (or even the moon) could backlight you as you come through your front door, creating a perfect silhouette for intruders already in your house. You may be walking to your car in a dark parking lot where there happens to be a light behind you. Apart from lighting conditions that are out of your control, it is simply impossible to light up every dark hole on your property with static lights.

The answer for these ‘bad light’ scenarios is, in a word, SureFire. If you find yourself being backlit or having to look from a light area into a ‘dark hole’ then you need a powerful handheld light. You can use a SureFire to hide your silhouette and completely illuminate any ‘dark holes’ that you need to see into. SureFire’s High Intensity Personal lights are specifically designed for these scenarios. If you activate your SureFire while holding it slightly ahead of your body, your potential attacker will only be able to see up to your SureFire. That’s if he can see at all after being blasted in the eyes by your SureFire. Everything behind your SureFire becomes instantly invisible to him. You have killed your silhouette are now working behind a ‘wall of bright light’. When I say that your SureFire should be slightly ahead of you, I don’t necessarily mean that you should hold it directly in front of your body. The F.B.I. pioneered a technique that has you holding your SureFire out to your side or high above your head at various angles. As long as your light is a couple of centimetres in front of you when your arm is outstretched, you will disappear behind a “wall of light”. (See comparison pictures below).

You looking into your living room, while backlit - from an intruder’s point of view.		You are looking into your living room, with no back-lighting, while shining your SureFire into the room - from an intruder’s point of view.

“But”, you ask, “Won’t the bright light from my SureFire give away my position”? The answer of course is “Yes” but if you don’t use your SureFire, your attacker is able to maintain his vision and has your silhouette as a target. By blasting a would-be attacker with your SureFire you temporarily blind him, dramatically increase your ability to see him and kill your silhouette in one fell swoop! Also, holding your SureFire slightly away from your centreline and using it at alternating heights is extremely confusing and disorientating for an attacker who is trying to get a fix your position, while he is being blinded by an exceptionally bright light. (See comparison pictures above and on next page).

You opening your garage door, while backlit - from an intruder’s point of view.		You’re standing in front of your garage door, with no backlighting, while shining your SureFire out onto the driveway - from an intruder’s point of view.

I will discuss the correct use of SureFire flashlights in more detail in future newsletters. For now, you will have to take my word for it... It has been proven thousands of times over in scenarios ranging from civilian muggings to elite military operatives searching for terrorists in dark caves in Afghanistan. If you find yourself facing a threat in a bad light situation, blasting the threat with the powerful beam from a SureFire is the best way to regain the advantage.

As always when dealing with personal safety principles, I don’t want you to take my word for any of the above. I want you to spend some time experimenting with the lighting in and around your own house. Get a family member to work with you so that you get to see the effects of different lighting set-ups from both your viewpoint (standing on the driveway, at the front door or at the entrance to the living room) as well as a potential attacker’s viewpoint. That’s right, I want you to hide in the ‘dark holes’ on your property as well as inside your house and get a family member to pretend that they are arriving home or checking the living room. It’s an eye-opening experience!