Surviving an Active Shooter Attack
I agree, it’s a shame we’ve got to have this conversation. But, it’s abundantly clear that we should. I’m hoping to give you a wider perspective on how to think about surviving an active shooter attack. There’s more than just run, hide, fight. Those options are a last-ditch effort, not a game plan. And that’s a good thing, it means there are a lot of factors we can influence in our favor before we ever find ourselves in that situation.
I’ll give you the most important piece of advice first:
HAVE A PLAN
“By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.”
Build the mental pathway for the ways that you want to react in an emergency, or you’ll be stuck without a game plan when your brain quits working under the stress of it all. The single most effective thing you can do to get home safe is to make a plan before something goes wrong.
I start by thinking of crisis events in layers. The risk of the situation determines the appropriate response options, which determine the result of the crisis. The further away you can keep the attack away from the center, the safer you are.
Risk: the overall situation, environment, location of the particular time and place of an attack.
Response: the knowledge, skills, and abilities combined with the physiological responses of the human body
Result: the final set of options to survive the attack
Managing RISK
Risk is natural part of everyday life, and we are all experts in managing risk. Think about driving home from work: We have to accept a certain level of risk by driving our vehicles every day. But we reduce the risk of an accident by keeping our eyes on the road and maintaining our vehicles. We reduce the impact of the risk of an accident with seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, etc. We transfer (or, share) our risk by paying for car insurance, so we can get things back to normal if we get into an accident. These same principles apply to all forms of risk, and that makes it very important to consider these “risk management” strategies in the context of active shooter attacks.
RISK is the combination of the likelihood, the vulnerability, and the impact of a crisis
Assess the threats before attending an event
the location, the facility, the environment
group identity, size, event type
information, current events, atmosphere
Advantageous Positioning
Seat yourself, or hang out near a fire exit, preferably toward the perimeter of the establishment. They’re usually locked from the outside, and they give you a quick out in a crisis. Try to position yourself so you can see the entrances. Avoid hanging around the entrances to places, a shooter won’t make it far into an establishment without causing alarm, but people in the initial contact area are in great danger due to proximity and surprise. A little bit of advanced warning goes a long way in an active shooter attack.
Situational Awareness
Enjoy the evening responsibly and keep your wits about you. You can casually keep tabs on the room and the general volume/activity/vibe of the place, while enjoying your evening. If someone gets loud, it should prompt you to assess the situation. You shouldn’t be nervous, but you shouldn’t get surprised either. Again, the point is to see it coming with enough time to do something about it.
Stack the Odds: RESPONSE
The idea here is to increase the number, and the likelihood of success, of the options we have available to us in an active shooter attack. In many ways, the mental, physical, and experience limitations we have in a shooting situation are a determining factor in the result of the incident.
We have to account for the known ways in which humans react to highly stressful and dangerous situations. We’ll need every advantage we can get in an active shooter attack, and reducing the opportunities for mistakes can make the difference we needed to survive.
First, realize that your brain only has so much bandwidth. When it gets overwhelmed in a dangerous and chaotic situation, it won’t work nearly as well. There isn’t much capacity left for reasoning and detailed, organized thought. That needs to be done ahead of time. This is where planning comes in, to make sure the “fight or flight” response doesn’t become a “freeze” response.
Second, recognize that your body has certain survival functions it will run through without your permission. These sub-conscious responses can limit our physical abilities in different ways and at different levels. For example, fine motor skills can get clumsy, tunnel-vision (and hearing) sets in, our heart races, and so on.
Finally, I’ll say training makes all the difference. It gives us another factor to add to the situation, to add to the number of options we have. Develop the necessary muscle-memory to speed up good responses and bypass the freeze response. The pros have a mantra to training: “amateurs practice until they get it right, professionals train until they can’t get it wrong.”
I look at it like this: the three factors of my training, my mental preparedness, and my physical response capabilities determine my response options in an attack.
Choose the tactics: RESULT
Most active shooter response models out there subscribe to a basic process to responding to active shooter events: Run, hide, fight. These final survival options are limited by the response options: training, mental, and physical factors. The more effort you can put into shaping and increasing your response options, the more of these options become available to you, and the better the result.
The response models all follow a specific sequence for good reason. Getting away from a shooter is the best way to survive an attack. Your first reaction should not be to cover up and sit tight, it should be to run. If you get surprised, you might have to quickly hide until the danger has passed, then make a break for it. If you get cornered, your best bet is to turn the tide on the shooter; overwhelm them quickly and get away.
Run: You should always be trying to get away from the danger in an active shooter situation. Put as much distance, and as many objects as possible between yourself and the shooter, as fast as possible. Run in a zigzag pattern and move from cover to cover. Get to safety, and help others escape.
Hide: Get out of sight and stay silent. The chances of becoming a victim are lower if the shooter doesn't know you are there. Always leave yourself an escape route and remember hiding is a temporary option until you can run.
Fight: as a last resort, you may be put in a position to have to fight for your life. If you’re armed, now is the time. If not, and you get cornered, the priority is to control the firearm: ambush the shooter, or grab the gun and hold it close to your chest in a safe direction to maintain leverage over the shooter's grip. Try to release the magazine or disable the firearm while others help to control the shooter. Team up to attack the most vulnerable areas on the shooter, as hard and fast as possible to initiate their self-preservation instinct/pain tolerance.
Call 911: as soon as you are safe, get help on the way and pass along vital updates to dispatch.
The Takeaway
There’s more to surviving an active shooter situation than run, hide, fight. The more factors you can consider helps to stack the odds more in your favor. Understand your natural reactions and limitations to the situation and plan accordingly. Practice your skills to develop muscle memory. And, above all, have a plan before something goes wrong. Panic and indecisiveness are deadly when seconds count.
The best way to survive an active shooter attack is to not be involved in it. By applying the same risk management principles we use every day, we can drastically reduce the likelihood we’ll be involved, and dramatically increase our chances of surviving the unthinkable.
