Sheepdog Tip of the Day

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The enemy may very well be looking at you through that toilet paper tube
or, what others have called "a hole in a doughnut." To take advantage of
his visual distortion, sidestep quickly to your right or left so that you,
in effect, disappear or "go off his radar screen." In order to visually
reacquire you, he has to blink, draw back and move his head in your
direction. In the critical second it takes for him to do that, you have a
brief moment of advantage. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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If, however, our warriors are still using blank, man-shaped silhouettes,
they are being conditioned to shoot anyone who jumps up in front of them.
Or they may hesitate when a real armed opponent--complete with clothing, a
face and a gun--pops up in front of them, because the target they trained
with did not have these features. A far superior training tool is the
photorealistic target. When one of these pops up, revealing a life-size
photo of a man holding his wallet, the trainee does not shoot. When the
next one pops up with a picture of a man holding a gun, the trainee reacts
to the deadly threat by instantly firing. Warriors don't shoot bulls eyes.
Warriors don't shoot silhouettes. Warriors shoot lawful, legitimate, deadly
force threats. With this preferred method, warriors develop conditioned
reflexes using superior, dynamic, realistic training to ingrain the proper
response. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Think you know this? Why not take a random quiz at
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While slow motion time can be a survival mechanism, it frequently comes
with too much baggage. It often happens in Condition Black [extreme heart
rate] and is accompanied by an extremely elevated heart rate and loss of
fine and complex motor control. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Consider not evacuating for bomb threats. Especially in schools. In the US
there has never been a bomb in a school when someone said there was. But
there have been bombs in the parking lot, and there have been several
occasions where the killer was waiting outside the school ready to open
fire. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)
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Terrorists usually don't negotiate, they fight to the death. When they ask
to negotiate, it is to buy time to reinforce their positions and
torture/murder the hostages. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, Sheepdog Seminar for
Churches (paraphrased)
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Your relationships with friends and family and your social support network
provide a healthy, resource-filled context for you. Knowing that you have
someone you can talk with about anything will allow you to vent stress and
prevent it from building up. Being involved with recreational activities
and having a hobby will pull you out of stressful situations and let your
positive thinking have its effect. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham,
Secrets of Mental Marksmanship
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Corrective instruction or highlighting a tactical mistake can have an
impact on the whole of the team team, and we miss the chance for the group
to learn if that is hidden behind a closed office door. At the risk of
repeating myself, the hotwash (= debriefing) cannot be personal.
Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness
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In one case, the officer shot a man armed with a shotgun. When the
officer's shot was muted, he thought his gun had misfired, but then
realized that it was working just fine when the bad guy reacted to the
impact of the bullet that hit him. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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If you're responsible for the security of a campus, perform tactical drills
(counter disturbance, abducted child, deadly force attack, executive
extraction / protection) on that campus and in the buildings. Carl Chinn,
Church Security Seminar (paraphrased)
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A hunter told us of having to kill Cape buffaloes on three separate
occasions, and elephants on two others, that were in a full-out charge. He
told us how a wave of panic would come over him when he first realized that
the animal was going to try to kill him. He controlled the panic by
recognizing that there was no way out but to face the charge and shoot the
best shot he had ever fired. At this moment a wave of calmness came over
him-he had a plan, he knew what he had to do, and he knew he could do it.

Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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One military student resisted telling us his personal motto for several
days. He kept telling the instructor that he didn't have one. The student
kept hearing the mottoes of the other students every day and still he kept
telling us he didn't have one. The instructor thought that perhaps the
student's motto was so bloodthirsty that he was embarrassed to tell it. But
eventually all was revealed. After several days of gentle but consistent
pressure, the student blurted out, "Look, I don't have one. Whenever I am
about to fire a shot I think, 'calm blue ocean' and I just can't come up
with a personal motto." The instructor had to smile at this one as he
explained to the student that he had an outstanding personal motto.
Thinking "calm blue ocean" would keep him calm and relaxed at exactly the
right time to fire a perfect shot. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham,
Secrets of Mental Marksmanship
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One person behind cover with effective fire can keep a whole platoon of
bad-guys scrambling for five minutes - enough time for more good guys to
show up. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar
(paraphrased)
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Every surrendering soldier instinctively knows that the first thing he
should do is drop his weapon, but if he is smart he will also ditch his
helmet. Holmes notes that "Brigadier Peter Young, in the second world war,
had no more regret about shooting a helmeted German than he would
about 'banging a nail on the head.' But somehow he could never bring
himself to hit a bareheaded man." Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Most killers are cowards. They shoot cops through doors and through walls.
When they realize they are in danger, they go to condition black. Use
that. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)
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Seven percent of the officers in Dr. Artwohl's study experienced temporary
paralysis in their gunfights. If this paralysis, sometimes referred to as
freezing, were actually occurring, then we could say that it is a
phenomenon that is clearly not a survival mechanism. Freezing does happen
sometimes in combat, but in some cases we know that those who think they
are experiencing temporary paralysis are actually experiencing slow motion
time. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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During periods of intense physical labor, our body attempts to maintain a
thermal balance by sweating. According to the FEMA Emergency Incident
Rehabilitation guide, During periods of extreme exertion, some people may
lose as much as 1 liter (about 1 quart or 2.2 pounds) of sweat per hour.

Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness

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Police snipers, you might think, would have an easier go of it. They just
sit in place and wait for the word. Well, when we're preaching the need for
fitness on our sniper courses, we like to relate the scenario of the police
sniper making his way up several flights of stairs when he gets the call
that "... this guy is killing hostages. Green light, green light. Shoot
him ... shoot him now!" The sniper is wearing all his armor and carrying
the required equipment, and now he must run up several flights of stairs.
He arrives in his position with his legs burning and feeling like rubber
and his lungs are coming out his nose. And now he must fire a shot that
will take one life to save others. Good people are depending on him. Linda

K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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You should see autopsies, to get used to seeing dead bodies under low
stress conditions in a sterile, clinical setting. This is another form of
stress inoculation. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind
seminar (paraphrased)
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If we use the Boyd loop successfully, we actually give ourselves more time
to think. This happens because we are able to reduce the mental workload by
making the entire decision making process more intuitive and developing a
smaller collection of "menu options" to pick from. We are using a smooth
and efficient thought process that allows us to maintain our focus and at
the same time devote a portion of our conscious mind to continually working
its way through the OODA loop. We can prepare ourselves to make better
decisions on the fireground if we examine the work of Boyd and use the
concepts he pioneered in our training. Christopher Brennan, The Combat
Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness
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During one conference that I attended with Col. Belenky, he told the story
of what happened after a soldier was killed. This soldier had stepped on
an unexploded bomblet (which had become essentially a landmine) in one of
the little outlying camps. Col. Belenky grabbed a helicopter and flew out
to the site, where he learned that the medic, who had treated the fatally
injured man, was still in deep shock 24 hours later. When the helicopter
had evacuated the body, the medic had just sat there, muttering how the
man's death was his fault. He said it so often and so intensely that
everyone else accepted it as the truth. Then Dr. Belenky gathered all
the participants for a debriefing. Once they began talking, it turned out
the platoon sergeant and platoon leader felt guilt over errors they had
made calling in the medivac helicopter. The group learned that the kid who
died had been carrying an M-203 grenade on his chest, ammunition he was
supposed to have turned in but the squad leader and team leader had let him
keep it. When he stepped on the ICM bomblet, it exploded and set off the
grenade on his chest. This was a source of guilt for the team leader and
squad leader, since they had failed to follow procedure. Then the medic
told his story. He had raced across what could have been a minefield,
dropped down beside the victim and began CPR, though there was no heartbeat
or respiration. Bloody air gurgled out the man's cheek, so the medic
slapped his hand over the wound and continued to apply mouth to mouth.
Bloody air gurgled out the guy's chest, so the medic ripped open his shirt
and tried to cover the gaping wound with his arm while continuing with
CPR. Then bloody air gurgled out of the guy's eye sockets. For over 20
minutes, the medic applied CPR to a bloody corpse, his own body becoming
drenched in the man's blood. Finally, the medivac bird came, the man was
placed into a body bag, and the helicopter whisked him away into the sky.
On the ground, the medic cried, "It's my fault. It's all my fault. I should
have done more." His friends sat stunned with tears in their eyes. They
hugged him and said, "We never understood what had happened. We never
understood. It's not your fault. You did all you could do." His peers were
the only ones who could convince him that it was not his fault. Dr. Belenky
said that when the others said those words and embraced him that the medic
blossomed like a rose. They gave him his life back. The doctor did a
follow-up on him later and he was just fine. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On
Combat
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We all have bad days and good days. Allow yourself the flux. Do not destroy
yourself because of a bad day, and do not destroy others because they had
one. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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I know of gangbangers who have sucked up a dozen 9-millimeter rounds and
drove on to survive. If they can do it, you can too. ... I know of a little
old lady who was stabbed 20 times and then crawled to the phone, dialed
9-1-1, and lived to tell about it. Never, ever give up after being shot or
stabbed. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Gene Edward Veith, Worldmag.com: During the invasion phase of the Iraq War,
Captain Zan Hornbuckle, a 29-year-old Army officer from Georgia, found
himself and his 80 men surrounded by 300 Iraqi and Syrian fighters. Unable
to obtain air or artillery support, Captain Hornbuckle and his unit-- who
were never before in combat--fought for eight hours. When the smoke
cleared, 200 of the enemy were dead ... not a single American was killed.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat

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The conscious mind is responsible for our situational awareness. Everyone
in the fellowship of arms needs to develop and maintain their situational
awareness, which is that ability to be aware of what is happening in your
area of influence. It sees what is happening to you, or about to happen to
you, and sends signals to the right places. Linda K. Miller and Keith

Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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Most of the language used in Parris Island to describe the joys of killing
people is bloodthirsty but meaningless hyperbole, and the recruits realize
that even as they enjoy it. Nevertheless, it does help to desensitize them
to the suffering of an "enemy," and at the same time they are being
indoctrinated in the most explicit fashion (as previous generations were
not) with the notion that their purpose is not just to be brave or to fight
well; it is to kill people. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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At the incident command (IC) level, Boyd's concepts of decision making
become best expressed in the idea of "intent," or in other words, an
expression of strategic objectives. Consider the battle plan of General
Tommy Franks in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His orders were to advance
rapidly toward Baghdad, engaging significant elements of the Iraqi Army, if
needed, and bypassing pockets of resistance if possible. He did not issue
orders in the same way they were issued in the Vietnam War to take and hold
specific terrain. He allowed subordinate commanders the latitude to address
the ground truth in their area of operations, as long as they were
supporting the overall intent of the operation. For the IC, the same
consideration should hold true. In applying Boyd's theories and embracing
implicit coordination through SOG-based IAPs, we allow individual and
subordinate commanders the latitude to choose how best to accomplish the
strategic objective. It should be obvious that one person will only be able
to make a limited number of timely decisions, and that as an IC, your role
is to operate at a strategic level. Christopher Brennan, The Combat
Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness
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Bureau of Justice Statistics demonstrated that our returning veterans from
World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War were less
likely to be incarcerated than non-veterans of the same age and the same
sex. While those who learned leadership, logistics and maintenance skills
returned home and put their learning to good use in the civilian world,
those soldiers who learned only to kill did not. Now, this does not mean
that our veterans do not have problems. The data simply shows that in each
of these wars we gave hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of men weeks,
months and years of training on how to kill. Then we sent them to distant
lands to fight for us, sometimes for years on end, and when they came home
they were less likely to use their deadly skill than non-veterans of the
same age and the same sex. The finest killers who ever walked the face of
this earth were the boys who came home from World War I, World War II,
Korea and Vietnam, and yet they were less likely to use those skills than a
non-veteran. The reason is clear: Combined with learning to kill, they
acquired a steely, warrior discipline--and that is the safeguard. Lt. Col.
Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Consider doing reverse fire drills. Pretend there is a shooting at the
playground and practice getting into the building as quickly as possible.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, Sheepdog Seminar for Churches (paraphrased)
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Dr. Artwohl found that eight out of ten of the officers she surveyed
experienced tunnel vision during their shootings. This is sometimes
referred to as perceptual narrowing, and as the name implies, under extreme
stress, such as occurs in a shooting, the area of visual focus narrows as
if the officer were viewing the situation through a tube. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Combat
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Several senior U.S. Air Force officers have told me that when the U.S. Air
Force tried to preselect fighter pilots after World War II, the only common
denominator they could find among their World War II aces was that they had
been involved in a lot of fights as children. Not bullies - for most true
bullies avoid fights with anyone who is reasonably capable of fighting them
- but fighters. If you can recapture or imagine the anger and indignity a
child feels in a school yard fight and magnify that into a way of life,
then you can begin to understand these individuals and their capacity for
violence. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Terrorists will often murder the adult male hostages immediately. If you're
an adult male, you have to fight from the start. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman,

Sheepdog Seminar for Churches (paraphrased)

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We need something that gets help sooner in the event of a violent attack.
If there is a fire, all I have to do is pull the fire alarm and there is a
hard-wired link to the fire guys, telling them immediately that there is a
fire and where the fire is located. If violence happens, you have to
pull out your cell phone, put in your pass code, get to the right screen,
dial 9, 1, 1 and "send", and then explain who you are, where you are, and
what is happening. Look at Guard911.com with this set of apps, all you
have to do is push a big red button on your cell phone, it notifies
everyone in the building who has the app, it notifies the police department
and every cop in a 5 mile radius, and it speed-dials 911. Recommended for
schools, business, churches, hospitals and anywhere else that may be
subject to violent attack. All the cops on this list are encouraged to
download the free Hero911 app, and if you are within 5 miles of a school
being attacked, you will be automatically informed. Lt. Col. Dave

Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)

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Subsequent kills are always easier, and there is much more of a tendency to
feel satisfaction or exhilaration after the second killing experience, and
less tendency to feel remorse. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Another method that helps the warrior is the presence of mature, older
comrades who are there for them. Somewhere along your path of warriorhood,
you might be forced to take a life. Afterwards, a veteran warrior will be
there to help you come to terms with it, so that you grow wiser and
stronger. Then someday when another warrior has to kill, it will be your
turn to help, and you will say to him, "Welcome to the club," and help him
through the process. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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There are several physical skills required for marksmen, especially for
operational marksmen, but the one that contributes the most to the
subconscious skills is aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness is all about being
able to deliver oxygen to the blood, and oxygen to the blood results in
clear vision, clear thinking, and controlled performance. Linda K. Miller

and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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The purpose of the self-image is to provide the ultimate picture for the
conscious and subconscious to follow. This is the true picture of how you
see yourself. One of the best ways to improve your self-image is through
self-talk. Self-talk is our internal voice, the monologue (or dialogue)
that we carry on in our minds. Stop reading this for a few moments, close
your eyes, and relax. What you just heard is your self-talk. It's the
spokesperson for our mental attitude ... you know, the mental attitude that
determines our altitude. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of
Mental Marksmanship
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Don't evacuate if you're in a safe place. There can be bombs outside, or
snipers outside. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar
(paraphrased)
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The fitter you are, the greater work capacity you will have; the greater
your work capacity, the more controlled your heart rate and breathing will
be while performing strenuous fireground (or combat) tasks. In short, the
more fit you are, the more likely you are to survive. Christopher Brennan,

The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness

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One of the most obvious and blatant benefits of atrocity is that it quite
simply scares the hell out of people. The raw horror and savagery of those
who murder and abuse cause people to flee, hide, and defend themselves
feebly, and often their victims respond with mute passivity. We see this in
the newspapers daily when we read of victims who are faced with mass
murderers and simply do nothing to protect themselves or others. Lt. Col.
Dave Grossman, On Killing
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A seasoned veteran is a very valuable commodity, to say the least! But
that "seasoning" was expensive. Lives may have been lost in combat to buy
that seasoning. We don't want those lost lives to have been in vain! We
need that veteran warrior in coming battles. So it is a small expense to be
sure that they have been properly eased back into combat. We'll put them
back on the horse, but it will be a horse we know they can master, not one
that will just buck them off again and reinforce the negative
associations. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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There are two types of mental rehearsal that we can use: Within the body -
We visualize an activity as if we were viewing it through our own eyes
(also known as first-person mental rehearsal). Outside the body-- We
visualize ourselves carrying out an activity as if we were standing back
watching (also known as third-person mental rehearsal). Both types work
well, and sometimes a combination of the two is best. Generally,
first-person rehearsal is used for those portions of the event that are
mostly mental (like acquiring a sight picture and firing a subconscious
shot) and the third-person rehearsal is used for more physical skills (like
arriving at the range and setting up equipment). Linda K. Miller and Keith

Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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Whether or not the shooter is aerobically fit, extreme stress (fear or
pain, for example) will affect breathing. The body is physiologically
designed to hyperventilate during extreme stress; it's preparing you for
fight or flight. When you do neither, the buildup of carbon dioxide can
prevent the absorption of oxygen into the blood. The idea, then, is to get
control of your exhaling (to expel the carbon dioxide) and the body will
take care of the inhaling part. Under some situations, "forced breathing"
is required. The shooter forces the exhale and ensures that lots of oxygen
is taken in. This technique works really well before the run in a
fire-with-movement competition or situation, as well as during the brief
recovery period after the run. Under other situations, "controlled
breathing" is required. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of
Mental Marksmanship
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Instead of lying prone on a grassy field calmly shooting at a bull's eye
target, the modern soldier spends many hours standing in a foxhole or
crouching behind cover, with full combat equipment draped about his body,
looking over an area of lightly wooded rolling terrain. At periodic
intervals one or two olive drab, man shaped targets at varying ranges will
pop up in front of him for a brief time, and the soldier must instantly aim
and shoot at the target(s). When he hits a target it provides immediate
feedback by instantly and very satisfyingly dropping backward just as a
living target would. Soldiers are highly rewarded and recognized for
success in this skill and suffer mild punishment (in the form of
retraining, peer pressure, and failure to graduate from boot camp) for
failure to quickly and accurately "engage" the targets - a standard
euphemism for "kill". Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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US Marine Corps' doctrinal publication Warfighting (MCDP-1): "If we fail to
make a decision out of lack of will, we have willingly surrendered the
initiative to our foe. If we consciously postpone taking action for some
reason, that is a decision. Thus, as a basis for action, any decision is
generally better than no decision." Christopher Brennan, The Combat
Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness
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Sleep deprived people do stupid stuff. 24 hours without sleep is the
equivalent of being .10 drunk. You see a video tape of a cop doing
something stupid, i'll bet you anything you want that he is sleep
deprived. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar
(paraphrased)
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We have seen before that when the enemy is fleeing or has his back turned,
he is far more likely to be killed. One reason for this is that in doing so
he has provided both means and opportunity for his opponent to kill without
endangering himself. Steve Banko achieved both means and opportunity when
he was able to sneak up on and shoot a Vietcong soldier. "They didn't know
I existed," said Banko, and that made it possible for him to muster his
courage, and he "squeezed softly on the trigger." Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Killing
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Steven Spielberg's motion picture Saving Private Ryan gives us an
incredibly realistic depiction of the violence and horror of combat. This
movie is something which, like sex, can be child abuse if inflicted upon
children, but for adults it can provide us with a wonderful model for
behavior when we talk about choosing life not death. Let me tell you what
Saving Private Ryan means to me. A band of U.S. Army Rangers go behind
enemy lines, where each man, one by one, dies to save one young
paratrooper: Private Ryan. To me that band of Rangers represents every
American warrior who ever willingly gave his life to give us the freedom,
the lives and the liberty that we have today. Those Rangers are the boys
who fell at Lexington and Concord, and they are bloody windrows of bodies
at Shilo and Gettysburg. They are trenches full of blood in the Ardennes
Forest, and they are a bloody tide of bodies at Normandy Beach and Iwo
Jima. They are more than 300 police officers and firefighters rushing up
the steps of the World Trade Center, and they represent the cop who died
yesterday, alone and afraid on a dirty street, somewhere in America. That
band of Rangers is every warrior who ever died to give us what we have
today. Private Ryan is us. He is every citizen who is alive and free
today because two centuries of warriors have gone before us and purchased
at the ultimate price what we have today. Do you remember the end of the
movie, when the last ranger, Captain Miller, lay dying on the bridge? He
looks up at Ryan, he looks up at us, and what are his dying words? "Earn
this. Earn it." Earn it. Be worthy. Don't waste it. Two centuries of
warriors look up from their graves in this dark hour, they look up from the
rubble of the World Trade Center, and their message is, "Earn it." We can
never truly earn what has been purchased at the ultimate price, but we can
do our best. Our model is Private Ryan. Do you remember the old man at
the very end of the movie standing over the grave of his comrades with his
grandbabies and his great-grandbabies bouncing all around him? He looks
over at his wife, and says, "Tell me I've led a good life. Tell me I've
been a good man." Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Many will say, "Colonel you're crazy. I'm not going to commit some criminal
act." Good, but the reality is you do not know what you are going to do
when your world comes unglued unless you prepare your mind, soul and spirit
ahead of time. You do not know for sure that you can dial 9-1-1 when your
world is coming unglued, and you do not know for sure you can make a
magazine change in your weapon unless you have rehearsed it ahead of time.
Likewise, when you have rehearsed and prepared to always do the right thing
at the moment of truth, you are more apt to deal appropriately with
whatever comes your way. The key is to work this matter out ahead of
time, because at the moment of truth making the right decision might be
difficult. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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A state trooper had pulled a car over for a routine traffic stop. As he
approached the rear fender of the car, the driver opened his door and
stepped out. He was holding a sawed-off single-barreled shotgun and fired
at the officer, hitting him with a full charge of buckshot in the center of
his chest. The next thing the officer remembered was that he was changing
magazines and scanning left and right. The perpetrator was lying against
the hinges of his car door, dropped over backward. He was neatly stitched
from belt buckle to throat with seven big .45-caliber bullets. Linda K.

Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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The first stage [of training with new hardware] is the experimental stage.
During this stage, we educate the student on the principles behind the
skill we're about to teach. We then demonstrate how we expect that skill to
be carried out, and then we provide lots of coached practice. We set up the
sniper rifle to fit properly. We adjust the scope for proper eye relief. We
make sure the trigger is right. We experiment with different adaptations of
the basic positions to find the one that is right for that individual. We
set the student up for success. This is all low-intensity training. Our
philosophy is, "Get good before you get fast, and smooth is fast." The
second stage of marksmanship practice is live rehearsals and scenarios,
which extends into operations. This is high-intensity training, and while
it starts off slowly, it gains momentum as the skill levels develop.
Because the emphasis is on being smooth, the student will get fast without
trying. It's during this stage that the student becomes ready for
operations. Then there is the recovery phase. It's widely known and well
documented that tactical police officers need some downtime, some time away
from the stresses of their job. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham,
Secrets of Mental Marksmanship
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> Fighting is a team sport. We are not operating as individuals, and > as
> such, the actions of the team are vital in our ability to maintain
> situational awareness (SA). We accomplish this through the use of
> standard operating guidelines (SOGs) and knowing what our teammates are
> doing based on the situation. Christopher Brennan, The Combat
> Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness
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The zealous Stoic would say that you should be unaffected by this; it was
not within your control. The ideal of Stoicism is very different from the
reality of human emotion and interaction. Anyone who is emotionally healthy
will be affected by the death of a seven-year-old. However, affected does
not have to mean traumatized. We have already discussed acute stress
reactions and learned that we can experience those reactions without being
affected by PTSD. Even if we do not experience any of the aforementioned
acute stress symptoms such as anxiety, sleep disruption, anger, or
avoidance, if we are normally psychologically adapted, we should experience
some feeling of sorrow or grief. Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position:
Achieving Firefighter Readiness
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A tremendous volume of research indicates that the primary factor that
motivates a soldier to do the things that no sane man wants to do in combat
(that is, killing and dying) is not the force of self-preservation but a
powerful sense of accountability to his comrades on the battlefield. Lt.
Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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In World War II, 80 to 85 percent of riflemen did not fire their weapons at
an exposed enemy, even to save their lives and the lives of their friends.
In previous wars nonfiring rates were similar. In Vietnam the nonfiring
rate was close to 5 percent. The ability to increase this firing rate,
though, comes with a hidden cost. Severe psychological trauma becomes a
distinct possibility when psychological safeguards of such magnitude are
overridden. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Being organized and knowing you are is an important factor in controlling
stress. The key to being organized is ensuring that you and your equipment
are in a state of readiness at the appropriate time. You need to be fit and
well rested, and your equipment needs to be in good working order. If you
don't train often, then you will have doubts about your equipment and your
abilities. Specifically, keep your rifle and sight maintained, zeroed, and
ready for competition or operations. Keep your equipment bag maintained
with the equipment you need. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets
of Mental Marksmanship
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Female warriors appear a lot less scary to women and children, and may be
more likely to get cooperation from victims. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The

Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)

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Think you know this? Why not take a random quiz at
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It is essential to understand that one of the most important aspects of
this process is that soldiers are always under authority in combat. No army
can tolerate undisciplined or indiscriminate firing, and a vital and easily
overlooked facet of the soldier's conditioning revolves around having him
fire only when and where he is told to. The soldier fires only when told to
by a higher authority and then only within his designated firing lane.
Firing a weapon at the wrong time or in the wrong direction is so heinous
an offense that it is almost unthinkable to the average soldier. Soldiers
are conditioned throughout their training and throughout their time in the
military to fire only under authority. A gunshot cannot be easily hidden,
and on rifle ranges or during field training any gunshot at inappropriate
times (even when firing blank ammunition) must be justified, and if it is
not justifiable it will be immediately and firmly punished. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Killing
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When you have cause to identify with your victim (that is, you see him
participate in some act that emphasizes his humanity, such as urinating,
eating, or smoking) it is much harder to kill him, and there is much less
satisfaction associated with the kill, even if the victim represents a
direct threat to you and your comrades at the time you kill him. Lt. Col.
Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Caffeine can keep you awake, but only if you are not habituated. On a
normal day, four cups of coffee should be the maximum. But switch to decaf
after lunch. The half life of caffeine in the human body is five hours. Two
cups of coffee with dinner at 5pm are the same as one "nightcap" cup of
coffee at 10pm. Even if you can sleep with caffeine, it won't be the deep
sleep cycle you need. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind
seminar (paraphrased)
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A lifetime of working with and training dogs has taught me that the worst
thing you can ever do is run from an animal. I have never yet met a dog I
could not face down or at least incapacitate with a kick as it charged, but
I have always known both instinctively and rationally that if I were to
turn and run I should be in great danger. There is a chase instinct in most
animals that will cause even a well trained and nonaggressive dog to
instinctively, chase and pull down anything that runs. As long as your back
is turned you are in danger. In the same way, there appears to be a chase
instinct in man that permits him to kill a fleeing enemy. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Killing
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A person deprived of sleep for 24 hours is virtually the physiological and
psychological equivalent of being legally drunk. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman,
On Combat
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The training methods that increased the firing rate from 15 percent to 90
percent are referred to as "programming" or "conditioning" by some of the
veterans I have interviewed, and they do appear to represent a form of
classical and operant conditioning (a la Pavlov's dog and B. F. Skinner's
rats). Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Thirty year old Kevlar armor will defeat your pistol. You need access to a
rifle. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar
(paraphrased)
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When you're shooting badly, stop. Too often, when people are training they
think the opposite. When they're shooting badly, they think, "Oh, I'm not
doing well. I'd better keep hammering at this until I get better." In fact,
what they're doing is reinforcing poor performance. They should stop
training and go to a different drill they can do well, a lower intensity
drill, or a "back to basics" training session. In some cases, they need to
do something completely different for a while. Linda K. Miller and Keith

Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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Rationality is critical. We need to maintain a rational view of the way
others treat us if we are to avoid relinquishing control of our emotions.
If we allow outside factors or people to hold sway over our emotions, to
the extent that we choose to view ourselves in an unfair negative light, we
will relinquish a tremendous amount of personal power, and abandon our
self-control. Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving
Firefighter Readiness
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The link between distance and ease of aggression is not a new discovery. It
has long been understood that there is a direct relationship between the
empathic and physical proximity of the victim, and the resultant difficulty
and trauma of the kill. This concept has fascinated and concerned soldiers,
poets, philosophers, anthropologists, and psychologists alike. Lt. Col.
Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Flashbacks don't mean you're going crazy. They are a perfectly normal
example of your brain keeping the combat reflexes in case they're needed
again. After a combat tour of duty, soldiers often take weeks to realize
when they wake up that they're at home and nobody is likely to try and kill
them today. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar
(paraphrased)
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Goals require you to make plans, to work hard, and, even more importantly,
to work smart. Goals will help you to organize for success. So what exactly
is a goal? A goal is a statement of desired endstate. A goal describes only
a thing that you can control. The key thing that a goal must be is
performance-oriented. The endstate that it describes must be an element of
performance that you can control; that is, the goal must be in
fact "doable." The test for whether a goal is doable is to ask the
following question: "Great advice, coach, but how?" Linda K. Miller and

Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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One of the most remarkable revelations in Watson's book War on the Mind is
his report of conditioning techniques used by the U.S. government to train
assassins. In 1975 Dr. Narut, a U.S. Navy psychiatrist with the rank of
commander, told Watson about techniques he was developing for the U.S.
government in which classical conditioning and social learning methodology
were being used to permit military assassins to overcome their resistance
to killing. The method used, according to Narut, was to expose the subjects
to "symbolic modeling" involving "films specially designed to show people
being killed or injured in violent ways. By being acclimatized through
these films, the men were supposed to eventually become able to
disassociate their emotions from such a situation. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman,
On Killing
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A training sergeant from one major western city told me that his city had
been having a significant problem with officers firing far too many shots
with drastically low hit ratios. He said that on the firing range his
officers could get around 90 percent hits, but on the street they were
lucky to hit with 20 percent of the bullets fired. When the sergeant was
ordered to call major police departments around the country to see if
others were having the same problem, he found that the vast majority of
departments were. One agency called it the "metro spray." He also found
that a small minority of departments had fixed the problem and were getting
over a 90 percent hit ratio in real, life-and-death shooting events. The
California Highway Patrol, Salt Lake City P.D., Toledo P.D. and other
pioneers across America are now reporting extraordinary hit rates, while
firing very few rounds. One of the key distinguishing characteristics that
differentiates these departments from others is their training. In
particular, in-service training that provides stress inoculation with paint
bullets or some other kind of force-on-force training with marking
capsules. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Fatigue can quickly shift into the psychotic dissociation from reality that
marks confusional states. Usually, the soldier no longer knows who he is or
where he is. Unable to deal with his environment, he has mentally removed
himself from it. Symptoms include delirium, psychotic dissociation, and
manic depressive mood swings. One often noted response is Ganzer syndrome,
in which the soldier will begin to make jokes, act silly, and otherwise try
to ward off the horror with humor and the ridiculous. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Killing
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Bruce Siddle and I co-authored an article on this topic, entitled "Critical
Incident Amnesia." It was published in the Journal of the International
Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI) and is posted
(complete with footnotes and scholarly references) on my web site,
killology.com. Consider these steps a valuable, scientific method to
collect information and to help the participants prevent or overcome trauma
from a stressful event. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Martin Seligman developed the concept of inoculation from stress from his
famous studies of learning in dogs. He put dogs in a cage that had an
electric shock pass through the floor at random intervals. Initially the
dogs would jump, yelp, and scratch pitifully in their attempts to escape
the shocks, but after a time they would fall into a depressed, hopeless
state of apathy and inactivity that Seligman termed "learned helplessness."
After falling into a state of learned helplessness, the dogs would not
avoid the shocks even when provided with an obvious escape route. Other
dogs were given a means of escape after receiving some shocks but before
falling into learned helplessness. These dogs learned that they could and
would eventually escape from the shocks, and after only one such escape
they became inoculated against learned helplessness. Even after long
periods of random, inescapable shocks, these inoculated dogs would escape
when finally provided with a means to do so. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On
Killing
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When we become anxious and our fight-or-flight response kicks in, our
cognitive ability diminishes. It is worth stressing again that situational
awareness is a cognitive skill, requiring us to perceive, comprehend, and
predict. Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter
Readiness
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The next paragraph in our performance analysis is called "solution
analysis." Here we recognize all the things that were missing from our
perfect performance. But we must turn them around from a negative overtone
to a positive one. If, for example, we missed a wind shot, we wouldn't
write down, "I missed a wind shot." This causes you to mentally list all
the ways you accomplished this mistake. Instead, you should write down the
solution for this in the present tense, first person, as if you're already
doing it correctly. For example, "I always memorize the wind flags and the
mirage, I relate this to the results of my last shot, and I use this
information to apply the correct setting to my next shot." Linda K. Miller

and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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In many combat situations the ultimate mechanism that leads to defeat is
when the leader of a group can no longer bring himself to demand sacrifice
by his men. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Establishing strategic objectives, operational priorities, guidelines for
engine and truck company operations, and tool assignments formalize the
critical knowledge, skills, and abilities that our fire service warriors
need to thrive on the fireground. Mastering these skills develops a sense
of confidence. When we trust our knowledge, skills, and abilities, we are
able to process more information, because we are not wasting time thinking
about the basics of our job. Our goal is to devote the maximum amount of
RAM (random access memory, or how much, and how fast, a computer
can "think") to maintaining our individual and team situational awareness
(SA). Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter
Readiness
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The first decision point in an intraspecies conflict usually involves
deciding between fleeing or posturing. A threatened baboon or rooster who
elects to stand its ground does not respond to aggression from one of his
own kind by leaping instantly to the enemy's throat. Instead, both
creatures instinctively go through a series of posturing actions that,
while intimidating, are almost always harmless. These actions are designed
to convince an opponent, through both sight and sound, that the posturer is
a dangerous and frightening adversary. When the posturer has failed to
dissuade an intraspecies opponent, the options then become fight, flight,
or submission. When the fight option is utilized, it is almost never to the
death. Konrad Lorenz pointed out that piranhas and rattlesnakes will bite
anything and everything, but among themselves piranhas fight with raps of
their tails, and rattlesnakes wrestle. Somewhere during the course of such
highly constrained and nonlethal fights, one of these intraspecies
opponents will usually become daunted by the ferocity and prowess of its
opponent, and its only options become submission or flight. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Killing
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The "intimate brutality" of bayonet killing gives every indication of being
a circumstance with tremendous potential for psychological trauma. Lt.

Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing

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If you don't have a solution, then say to yourself, "I need a solution
for ..." This creates a positive approach and attitude toward solving a
problem. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental
Marksmanship
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Another powerful process that ensures compliance in atrocity situations is
the impact of terrorism and self preservation. The shock and horror of
seeing unprovoked violent death meted out creates a deep atavistic fear in
human beings. Through atrocity the oppressed population can be numbed into
a learned helplessness state of submission and compliance. The effect on
the atrocity committing soldiers appears to be very similar. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Killing
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Unlike operant conditioning, in social learning it is not essential that
the learner be directly reinforced in order for learning to take place.
This means that you can learn behavior, and form attitudes and beliefs, by
seeing a role model get rewarded for a behavior. This includes role models
in TV, movies, and video games. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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A great deal of misunderstanding has arisen from the fact that a "bayonet
charge" could be highly effective even without any bayonet actually
touching an enemy soldier, let alone killing him. One hundred per cent of
the casualties might be caused by musketry, yet the bayonet could still be
the instrument of victory. This was because its purpose was not to kill
soldiers but to disorganize regiments and win ground. It was the flourish
of the bayonet and the determination in the eyes of its owner that on some
occasions produced shock. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Loren Christensen tells of a rookie officer on his agency who was not only
incapable of shooting someone, but he would not even wear his sidearm. The
officer was hired in the winter and because he wore a long, heavy uniform
jacket, his training partner did not know that the rookie was locking his
entire web belt and firearm into the car trunk at the beginning of each
shift. When the training officer finally caught on--about three weeks
later--he immediately drove the rookie back to the precinct. The new man
was terminated a few days later, and rightfully so. Now, this man may have
been a wonderful husband and father, and an outstanding citizen, but he had
no business in police work. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
http://tipyomi-sender.appspot.com/showtip/Sheepdog%20Tip%20of%20the%20Day/Before%20Combat/6

[qbz...@gmail.com]

When the blood drains from the face, it is also draining from the
forebrain. The middle brain, the puppy, is in control. Don't try logic with
someone in this state. Puppies aren't good at abstract concepts. Lt.

Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)

http://tipyomi-sender.appspot.com/showtip/Sheepdog%20Tip%20of%20the%20Day/During%20Combat/101

[qbz...@gmail.com]

Increasingly, we have learned that PTSD should get a kind of tough love -
you get disability, while your job is to recover, and recover you will.
The expectation that you can and will recover is a key part of the healing
process, in yourself and in others. Medical science moves on, the docs get
better every day, and of course you should expect them to get better at
treating PTSD. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar
(paraphrased)
http://tipyomi-sender.appspot.com/showtip/Sheepdog%20Tip%20of%20the%20Day/After%20Combat/160