Sheepdog Tip of the Day

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Like the police officer, the modern soldier is likely to have his every act
videotaped and reported on national TV, and there is no tolerance for any
deviation from the rules of war. Today our soldiers are held to the highest
standards, and that is a good thing. It's as if we had been playing
football but now it is basketball season, and some fool is out there trying
to tackle people on the basketball court. He is tackling people on the
basketball court! What's going to happen? He's going to foul himself out of
this game. And if he's not careful, he's going to lose this game.
Whether you are a soldier or marine in close combat, a peacekeeper in a
distant land, or a police officer working in the mean streets of America,
you are held to a far higher standard than that of the average person. As
such, you must dedicate yourself now, ahead of time, to the concept of
justice, not vengeance. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Many firearms instructors tell me that there are some officers in today's
new generation of young recruits who walk onto their pistol ranges, hold a
real pistol in their hands for the first time and, after firing a few shots
to adjust themselves to the weapon, are supernatural marksmen. When asked,
almost all of them say that they are avid players of the point-and-shoot
arcade video games. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Dr. Artwohl talks about an interview she had with a police officer after he
had been in a gunfight. The officer said: "The suspect shot at me and I
froze. It took an eternity for me to finally return fire at him." Well, it
only seemed that long to the officer. There was an audio tape of the
gunfight and we know that the officer returned fire only a fraction of a
second later. For him, though, it felt like forever. 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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"Execution" is defined here as the close range killing of a noncombatant
(civilian or POW) who represents no significant or immediate military or
personal threat to the killer. The effect of such kills on the killer is
intensely traumatic, since the killer has limited internal motivation to
kill the victim and kills almost entirely out of external motivations. The
close range of the kill severely hampers the killer in his attempts to deny
the humanity of the victim and severely hampers denial of personal
responsibility for the kill. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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The essence of the military is that to be a good leader you must truly love
(in a strangely detached fashion) your men, and then you must be willing to
kill (or at least give the orders that will result in the deaths of) that
which you love. The paradox of war is that those leaders who are most
willing to endanger that which they love can be the ones who are most
liable to win, and therefore most likely to protect their men. The social
class structure that exists in the military provides a denial mechanism
that makes it possible for leaders to order their men to their deaths. But
it makes military leadership a very lonely thing. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Killing
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"The thought of cold steel sliding into your guts," says McKenna, "is more
horrific and real than the thought of a bullet doing the same perhaps
because you can see the steel coming." This powerful revulsion to being
killed with cold steel can also be observed in mutinous Indian soldiers
captured during the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny who "begged for the bullet" by
pleading to be executed with a rifle shot rather than the bayonet. Lt.

Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing

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Terrorists, juvenile and adult, want to die for glory. They fear failure,
mockery, and obscurity. If you stop them before they get a bodycount, you
have not just defeated them, you have humiliated them and have deterred
others for trying similar attacks. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet
Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)
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Bad guys can wear body armor, so shotgun slugs might not hurt them. On the
other hand, if you miss the slug will go through several walls and hurt
somebody else. Rifles (using standard 5.56mm/.223 AR ammo) are much better
- stopped by walls, but go through body armor. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The

Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)

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In his 2003 book, Intuition at Work, Klein explored a means of training for
intuitive decision making. He described a process of three key elements
that can aid in training to make decisions intuitively. 1. Identify and
understand the decision requirements of your job. 2. Practice the difficult
decisions in context. 3. Review your decision-making experiences. The
process works through what Klein calls "decision games." The idea is a
simple one: identify the critical decisions you will have to make ahead of
time and practice them. A lot of folks I know call this process "war
gaming." Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter
Readiness
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If at the moment of truth you cannot pull the trigger, then all your
training and all your equipment are wasted, and the lives of those you are
sworn to protect will be wasted, and you will be an abject failure. Lt.
Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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PTSD happens, but it is treatable. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, Sheepdog
Seminar for Churches (paraphrased)
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It's a critical part of the coach's role to help the shooter identify the
negative comment for what it is: an opportunity to find a solution. The
coach can help the shooter turn his attitude around by rewording the
negative analysis into positive performance statements to create the right
picture to be used next time. As the shooter becomes familiar with the
technique, he will learn to identify his own solution opportunities and
will start to build a positive, constructive attitude into his own
performance analysis. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of
Mental Marksmanship
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In Normandy during World War II Field Marshal Montgomery had two classes of
divisions. Some were veterans of North Africa and others were green units,
without previous combat experience. Montgomery initially tended to rely on
his veteran units (particularly during the disastrous Operation Goodwood),
but these units performed poorly, while his green units performed well. In
this instance, failing to understand the influence of emotional exhaustion
and the Well of Fortitude had a significant negative impact on the Allied
effort in World War II. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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The effects of sleep deprivation can impact us if we miss even a single
good night's sleep, or as it's referred to clinically, restorative sleep.
In addition to the daily reality of disrupted sleep cycles, two key factors
are chronic sleep deprivation and acute sleep deprivation. There is
evidence that missing as little as one hour of sleep per night for a full
week has the same effect as being awake for one full 24-hour period.
Sleeping six or fewer hours per night for a week can have the same impact
on your heart as smoking a pack of cigarettes per day. Christopher

Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness

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Once it is understood that the true destruction and defeat of an enemy
happens in the pursuit, then the actual utility of those weapons that
provide a mobility advantage becomes clear. First, a mobility advantage
often permits a force to get at the enemy's flank or rear. Combatants seem
to have an intuitive understanding of their psychological and physical
vulnerability when an opponent attacks from their rear, a tactic that
almost always results in a mass panic. Secondly, it is during the pursuit
that a mobility advantage is needed if a pursuing force is to kill the
enemy. An opponent who has cast aside his weapons and armor can generally
outrun an armed pursuer, but a man on foot cannot outrun chariots or
cavalry. These mobile forces have their greatest utility stabbing and
shooting helpless, terrified men in the back. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On
Combat
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One police officer told me of his powerful autopilot experience: Let me
tell you how powerful this autopilot business is. I came around the corner
of this guy's van; I'm just going to tell him to move it. I didn't know
that he'd already killed one person. You honestly don't know you're doing
it. All of a sudden a gun appears in his hand. Then a hole appears in his
chest and the guy drops. My first thought was, "Whoa, somebody shot him for
me!" I actually looked over my shoulder to see who shot this guy. Then I
realized I had my gun in my hand and it was me who had shot him. Lt. Col.
Dave Grossman, On Combat
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For those who don't push the envelope through physical fitness and
repetitive training, Condition Gray is generally a realm in which complex
motor skills begin to break down. One of the things that appear to be
happening here is that bilateral symmetry begins to set in, meaning that
what you do with one hand you are likely to do with your other.
Bilateral symmetry can have grave consequences for a police officer in a
tense situation where he is holding a pistol on a suspect. Say the suspect
attempts to flee and the police officer grabs him with his free hand. This
is never a good tactical technique, and it is especially bad when the
officer's heart rate is racing past 145 beats per minute (bpm). His
accelerated heartbeat causes bilateral symmetry, so that as the officer
grabs a fistful of the suspect's shirt with one hand, he has a convulsive
clutch response in his gun hand, which causes an unintentional discharge of
the weapon. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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The day after a major school shooting, I was in the school explaining the
debriefing process to the teachers who had just survived that horrific
event. I explained that they should not feel guilty about any initial
concern they had for themselves during the tragedy, because such an emotion
was a perfectly normal response to such extraordinary violence. I told them
that it is similar to when the stewardess on an airliner tells them that if
there is a loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop down, and they
should put on theirs before they help small children. The first response of
the organism is to take care of itself first, and that is okay, because
that is simply the law of nature. After I explained this to those teachers,
several of them laid their heads down on a table and began to sob with
relief. They were relieved and comforted to learn that what they had
experienced was normal. 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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There is a significant body of evidence that indicates that nonkilling
military personnel on the battlefield suffer significantly fewer
psychiatric casualties than those whose job it is to kill. Medical
personnel in particular have traditionally been bulwarks of dependability
and stability in combat. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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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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Humans are born with constraints upon their ability to kill fellow humans,
so throughout history we have devoted great effort to finding ways to
overcome this resistance. From a combat evolution perspective, the history
of warfare can be viewed as a series of successively more effective
tactical and mechanical mechanisms to enable or force combatants to
overcome their resistance to killing. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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If we do not have an honest hotwash (= debriefing), we risk losing the
chance to learn the lessons. In his book Inside Delta Force, Eric Haney
talks about learning how to conduct room-clearing exercises. Four men
enter the room and have to engage an unknown number of hostile targets
with cutouts of hostages mixed in. If a member of the team accidently
shot a hostage, it, "meant an immediate 'Chinese Self-Criticism Drill.'
Everything stopped, and you had to explain to the instructor and your
teammates why you shot a good guy." We have to own our mistakes if we are
going to improve. No one shows up to work thinking, "Boy, what can I screw
up today?" Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter
Readiness
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What happens when you use a flashbang? The flash stuns the suspect's eyes
and the bang stuns his ears. His skin feels the concussion, and his nose
and mouth suck in some of the smoke. All five senses simultaneously send an
emergency message to the brain, and the overloaded brain says "Tilt. Game
over. Reboot." Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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We have always conducted critical incident debriefings. We did them every
night around the campfire, and the "Old Sarge" always led them. There was
always an old sarge, an old captain, or an old chief who was the survivor
of past battles. We knew that if we were going to be survivors, if we were
going to be there for our village or our nation in the years to come, then
we had to be like him. Old Sarge modeled survivor behavior, and Old Sarge
was calm. Across untold thousands of years, we learned that the man who
became weepy or angry when he talked about his combat experience would not
be there for his village next year. Unless he was able to get his emotions
under control. Other than in funerals, warriors have always been
embarrassed to weep in front of their brothers, and they were embarrassed
to see a brother weep because it showed a character flaw, a true weakness
which meant that he might fail his comrades in the future. If he was not
able to get his emotions under control. The laconic Spartans modeled
this behavior. The inscrutable samurai epitomized this code. The quiet
plainsman, woodsman and cowboy who were products of the American Civil War,
the Indian wars and the harsh frontier, symbolized this ethic. And the
sang-froid that marked the height of the French Empire; or the ethic of
British imperturbability, the "stiff upper lip" that sustained the British
Empire; was more than just an affectation: it was a vital survival skill.
The stoic Romans exemplified this ethos, but today, almost 2,000 years
later, they have evolved into the wonderful, colorful, flamboyant,
emotional and militarily incompetent Italians. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On
Combat
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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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Of all the actions you could take in combat, the one most likely to destroy
you is to commit an atrocity or a criminal act. Your unconscious mind,
you "puppy" knows that you are not at peace with the "pack" and that can
eat you alive. ... Earlier, I talked about how pain shared is pain
divided. This is a powerful tool, but when a warrior commits a criminal
act, he cannot share that pain. I also talked about how you are only as
sick as your secrets. If as a warrior you commit a crime or an act of
vengeance, you cannot share that secret with anyone, and it will only eat
away at you. When we are young and hard, we think we can get away with
anything. A World War II veteran once sat across from me, wracked with
sobs. He was, to my mind, a magnificent noble American, but he had made one
tragic, horrific mistake in his life and it was eating him alive. He looked
at me, tears streaming down his cheeks, and said, "Colonel, I'm an old man
now, and I'm going to have to answer to my maker soon. I'm going to have to
answer for that day it was inconvenient to take those German soldiers back.
The day we shot them while they were quote, 'trying to escape.' I murdered
those men that day; we murdered them. We didn't have to kill them. We
murdered them, and soon I will have to answer to my maker for what I
did." What do you tell a man like that? No one is beyond redemption, but
I know what that old soldier would advise us: "Don't do it." Lt. Col.
Dave Grossman, On Combat
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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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Perceiving the action in slow motion can definitely be a survival
mechanism. Over the years, many people have talked about slow-motion time,
but until Dr. Artwohl collected data showing that 65 percent of officers
engaged in a gunfight experienced it, no one really understood that it was
so prevalent. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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In a heart-pounding situation, the loss of your fine-motor control and near
vision makes it mandatory that you drill on those things that seem simple
when you are calm and collected. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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The idea of sensory overload is to stun the suspect so that officers can
apprehend him without having to use deadly force. Problems arise, however,
when a suspect is inadvertently inoculated to the flash bang. Occasionally,
SWAT officers tell me that their flash bangs failed to work on a suspect.
When I ask how many were used, they say something like, "Well, we used a
dozen as we searched room to room before we finally found the suspect."
While circumstances might have necessitated them to use flash bangs in
every room, by the time they got to where the suspect was really hiding, he
had been warned, emotionally prepared, and inoculated against the effect.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat

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There are deeper underlying causes for the psychiatric casualties suffered
by soldiers in combat. Resistance to overt aggressive confrontation, in
addition to the fear of death and injury, is responsible for much of the
trauma and stress on the battlefield. Thus, the Reign of Fear is
represented as only one contributing factor in the soldier's dilemma.
Fear, combined with exhaustion, hate, horror, and the irreconcilable task
of balancing these with the need to kill, eventually drives the soldier so
deeply into a mire of guilt and horror that he tips over the brink into
that region that we call insanity. Indeed, fear may be one of the least
important of these factors. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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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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In a hostage situation, a fire hose can knock the criminal and the hostage
off their feet with nobody getting hurt. The fire hose can disrupt the
bomb. It can set off the trip-wire and put out the fire the bomb could
start. Your friends in the fire department can help, especially if you
coordinate with them ahead of time. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet
Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased) Note: Feedback from a fellow sheepdog
(Chuck Van Meter): Most squad cars carry some chemical weapons in their
trunk additionally SWAT and ERU teams bring the full repertoire of grenades
for their disposal. 1. OC/CS grenades 2. Smoke grenades 3. Flash Bang
grenades 4. Stingball grenades Gas projectors such as S&W 37mm are
valuable tools in projecting chemical weapons and denying operating areas
to rioters. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman: Great input. Others may disagree
with you, but we should consider all options. Many police cars do not have
all the goodies you mention in their trunk (although they should!) and you
make an excellent point about the fire-hose attached to a standpipe.
But the hose attached to a fire truck or a fire hydrant is a completely
different critter. In one incident, a SWAT team commander told me he was
faced with a hostage situation where a man had soaked his trailer-home,
wife and kids in kerosene, and was at the front door holding them hostage
with a gun and a lighter. The SWAT commander used the fire hose from a fire
truck and, "Blew the guy out the back side of his trailer-home!" He had the
firefighters operating the hose covered by cops with shields. He said the
only problem was the fire guys didn't want to turn the hose up to full
power, so he walked over to the fire engine and cranked it up to full power
himself. No one died that day because of this innovative tactical
commander Again, you make a great point, every situation is different,
and we must consider all options available. But the point here is to keep
the fire hose in mind as a great potential resource. Stay staunch!
Dave Christopher Brennan (firefighting author and trainer): A
hoseline pumped from a fire engine has the ability to knock someone around
like a rag doll. Also, fire departments pretty much have legal authority to
refuse to use fire hoses on demonstrators and deny the police the right to
do so ever since the freedom marches in the 1960's. We might do it to
protect ourselves, but we are way more likely to just leave the area.
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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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Unless you have been properly trained, it is quite easy for you to
experience a profound breakdown of speaking ability, and in Condition Black
you may literally be scared speechless when operating at extreme levels of
stress. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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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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Pearl, Mississippi. A 17-year-old kid walks along a hallway in Pearl High
School gunning down other students. The vice-principal has a .45 automatic
in his car (a federal offense, though no one has ever pressed charges) and
runs out to the parking lot to retrieve it. A moment later, this educator
stands face-to-face with the kid, pointing his gun at the young man, and
says, "Stop!" Amazingly, the kid stops. A 17-year-old crazed mass murderer
with a loaded gun in his hand is ordered to stop shooting people, and he
does. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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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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During high-threat situations you may experience a strange sense of
detachment, as if the event were a dream, or you were looking at yourself
from outside your body. You may go from that "oh-shit" moment with an
intense awareness of fear, to feeling almost nothing as you focus only on
staying alive. ... The initial conclusions from the 2001 stress studies
of Green Berets, conducted by Morgan and Hazlett indicate that dissociation
may be associated with less effective performance in combat and a
predisposition to PTSD after combat. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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A trainer should never declare his students to be dead, and if a student
ever states that he is dead, the right answer is, "No, you aren't dead! I
don't give you permission to die. I don't train people to die. I train them
to live!" Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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We must be cautious about putting specific numbers on these Conditions, but
it would appear that even under the most ideal circumstances, above 175
beats per minute (bpm) a catastrophic set of events begins to happen. Lt.

Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat

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Your body builds up a sleep debt, and just as you can catch-up on
dehydration and malnutrition, you can catch-up on sleep. So, if you got
only three hours sleep last night, you can use caffeine to get yourself
through the day. But as soon as you get a chance, sleep in late or take
some major naps to catch up on your sleep debt. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On
Combat
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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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Consider a police-involved shooting that happened in Portland, Oregon, as I
was writing this very section. A uniformed officer responded on a radio
call to a check-cashing store regarding a 16-year-old male passing a bad
check. As the officer was applying the handcuffs, the kid spun around,
pulled a pistol from his waistband, and fired into the officer's face.
The bullet struck the officer in his left eyebrow, traveled under his skin,
and exited behind his left ear. Two subsequent rounds whizzed by his
face. Shots were exchanged in the lobby, and then a running gun battle
ensued in which several more rounds were fired. The suspect eventually
collapsed in an adjacent driveway with bullets in his pelvis, chest and
abdomen. The shot officer kept him covered as he called for backup, and not
until other officers arrived on the scene did he collapse. Later when
asked by the press how the officer was doing, the chief said that his head
was sore but he was really angry with the kid for shooting at him. Lt.
Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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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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Warriors must also move toward the sound of the guns, toward the most
cunning, ingenious, destructive creature on the face of the earth: one of
their own species trying to kill them. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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What does zero tolerance mean? It means that we hold ourselves and one
another accountable. If my physical conditioning has slacked off, I need
to get back into the gym and work harder. If my partner has been cutting
corners, it means I must call him or her on it. If you are the company
officer and one of your people does not wear a seat belt, you do not let
the rig move until they put it on. We have to stop letting things slide.
In some departments it may seem like the list of problems is too long to
do anything about, but that is not true; you start with yourself, and
things will begin to turn around. You have to be honest about your
capabilities and your strengths and weaknesses, and strive to eliminate
your weaknesses, rather than just try to do what you are good at. You must
model the behavior you want others to have, and they will follow you.

Christopher Brennan, The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness

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In Condition Black [extreme stress and high heart are] you can run and you
can fight like a big, hairless, clawless bear, but that is about all you
are capable of doing. Your forebrain shuts down and the midbrain,
the "puppy" inside, that part that is the same as your dog's brain, reaches
up and "hijacks" the forebrain. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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We know that it is common for junior high or high school female athletes to
stress their bodies in training to the extent that they stop having their
monthly periods. It is logical, therefore, that junior high or high school
girls, who witness the horror of their friends being gunned down, may also
experience a cessation of their periods. It is a normal response.
Now, we know there is an ongoing level of sexual activity among high school
and middle school students, and after a horrific incident, such as a
Columbine or a Jonesboro, there is going to be an even greater level of
sexual activity. How do you think the girls are going to react when they
fail to have their periods? Stressed? Do you think it might stress those
boys out, too? We think some of the extreme stress response, and perhaps
even some of the suicides that occur in the first two months after these
horrendous events, might be linked to this phenomenon. These young girls'
lives are already stressful (i.e., their tubs are already full) just
dealing with all that goes into being a teenager, so when they experience a
traumatic event, and a few weeks later think they are pregnant, it can be
just too much for some of them. This is a relatively easy problem to
deal with. When we were working in the school after the Jonesboro massacre,
I was first made aware of this possibility by my old battalion sergeant
major, Jeff Shearman. He knew about it from his time as a drill sergeant in
charge of a platoon of female recruits. After the shootings, we advised
the girls' physical education teachers to tell their girls' PE class that
their periods might stop in response to what they had experienced. The
girls should know that if it happens, it does not necessarily mean they are
pregnant. That is all it took to shortstop the problem. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Combat
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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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In Loren Christensen's book, Crazy Crooks he tells of one documented case
in which one dumb crook became confused when he did not hear his pistol
fire. He turned the gun around and peered down the barrel to see if there
was an obstruction; it was clear. Dumbfounded as to why it did not go bang,
he squinted down the barrel even harder and pulled the trigger again. Lt.

Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat

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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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As a warrior, you might one day face the single most difficult task any
person will ever have to face: to decide whether to use deadly force and
take a life. Most likely, you will have to make that decision in a split
second, in the most toxic, corrosive environment known to man: combat, the
realm of the universal human phobia. If you chose to take a life when you
should not, or if you fail to take a human life when you should, a world of
hurt will come down on you. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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The men who fought in World War II were superb soldiers armed with
excellent weapons, but they had poor combat training. The problem is that
most of the time they were taught to fire at bulls eye targets, as were
police officers just a few decades ago. The fundamental flaw in training
for combat this way is that there are no known instances of any bulls eye
targets ever attacking our warriors. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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With all the preparation that a military unit must do to get ready for
operations, the one that most often gets overlooked is confirming the zero
on all weapons. Most people in supervisory roles seem to think that if a
weapon has been zeroed once in its life, it will be zeroed for everybody
for the rest of its life. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of
Mental Marksmanship
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Authors Judith Acosta and Judith Simon Prager have lead the way to a
different response with their book, The Worst is Over: What to Say When
Every Moment Counts. Although there is much of value in the book, for our
purposes here, the title pretty much says it all. In their book Acosta and
Prager tell us that: An altered state is like fertile soil. We can either
plant healthy seeds that grow into fruit-producing plants, we can let the
weeds overrun it, or we can let erosion wash it away in the storm. We can
either say and do nothing, use our words and our presence to heal, or use
our words to harm. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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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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Consider a paint bullet scenario that was given to sworn, veteran police
officers in Nebraska. In the scenario, they were told that they had
received an "officer needs help call," with shots fired. When they got to
the scene, they would find the officer down with the suspect pointing a gun
at the officer's head. "I'm going to kill him," the suspect says. "I'm
going to kill him." The tricky part of this scenario was that the suspect
had his back turned to the officer. When the officers were faced with
this situation (one in which they were fully authorized to shoot the man),
the majority would not fire, and would do so only after the suspect shot
the officer in the head. A significant minority of officers would not even
fire then, but would wait until the suspect pointed the weapon toward them.
Of course then it would be an action/reaction situation, and the officers
would probably lose. Waiting for the suspect to shoot the officer or
point his weapon at you is not an action that saves lives. Warriors need to
decide in advance, to the best of their ability, that they can do the right
thing when the time comes. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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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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Every time you hear about a gangbanger sucking up rounds and driving on,
every time you hear about some Medal of Honor recipient sucking up damage
and driving on, every time you hear about a cop taking a bullet through the
heart and driving on, say to yourself, "If that person can do it, I can
too." Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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A fire service warrior must approach life-threatening situations that
would cause fear in any normal person with a focused calm. In religious
ceremonies, a key concept is to induce an alerted state of consciousness,
that is, a mind-set in which the ordinary, day-to-day thoughts are set
aside and people allow their spiritual and existential self to emerge.
Anyone who has been moved by a religious ceremony, the performance of a
symphony, or the sight of dawn breaking over the mountains has experienced
that kind of altered state of consciousness. Firefighting should be an
altered state of consciousness. Preparing for your shift should be done
with the same attention to detail a minister gives in preparing to preach.
The alert of the station alarm or the pager on your belt should mentally
trigger your understanding that something outside of your normal existence
is about to occur, like the swelling of an orchestra during Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony. If you ever find yourself having to call a Mayday, it
should be with the same sense of calm heard in the voice of Sully as he
guided his aircraft into the Hudson. Christopher Brennan, The Combat
Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness
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In law enforcement, there is a real and present danger for any officer if
he loses situational awareness by getting mesmerized on a single suspect.
The problem, of course, is that there may be other perpetrators nearby who
are also dangerous. To counter this, law enforcement training requires the
officer to scan all around after each engagement. This breaks them out of
their tunnel vision and "unaware" state and brings them to a situationally
aware state. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental
Marksmanship
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Jack Thompson, a veteran of close combat in several wars, warned of the
dangers of combat addiction. The adrenaline of combat can be greatly
increased by another high: the high of killing. What hunter or marksman has
not felt a thrill of pleasure and satisfaction upon dropping his target? In
combat this thrill can be greatly magnified and can be especially prevalent
when the kill is completed at medium to long range. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Killing
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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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Have you ever tried to have an argument or a discussion with a truly
frightened or angry person? It cannot be done, because the more frightened
and angry the person is, the less rational he is. This is because his
forebrain has shut down and his midbrain, the one like a dog's, is in
control. In fact, you might as well try to argue with your dog; he might be
intrigued by the experience but it will not accomplish much. Nor will you
accomplish much when trying to talk to a human being in this heightened
condition. To connect with him, you must first calm him down. Lt. Col.
Dave Grossman, On Combat
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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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Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall, Men Against Fire: " The army ... must
reckon with the fact that he comes from a civilization in which aggression,
connected with the taking of life, is prohibited and unacceptable. The
teaching and ideals of that civilization are against killing, against
taking advantage. The fear of aggression has been expressed to him so
strongly and absorbed by him so deeply and pervadingly--practically with
his mother's milk--that it is part of the normal man's emotional make up.
This is his greatest handicap when he enters combat. It stays his
trigger-finger even though he is hardly conscious that it is a restraint
upon him." Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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A warrior is not proven only in combat, but also in life. He lives by a
code, not because codes are "honorable" or a fad, but because that is how a
warrior thinks and so it is how he lives. Combat is an extension of that
code, not the source. The rigidity of military discipline reflects his
mindset and the two feed off each other, the man strengthened by the
military and the military strengthened by the man. His code in peacetime
is the same as that in the military: do your duty, protect the weak,
protect the community, face the bully, stand tall, stay aware, think ahead,
be ready, be loyal, avoid aggression if possible and, if not, win and win
fully. Respect and honor are earned by actions, not granted by birth. There
are a thousand military codes spread throughout history, but I believe they
all say the same thing at heart: Live with honor, and let not your death be
born by the pallbearers of disgrace, cruelty, weakness, and fear. Lt. Col.
Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Provided a killer can't shoot out a glass window or door, inside a locked
classroom is a pretty safe place. Parking lots can be much more
vulnerable. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, Sheepdog Seminar for Churches
(paraphrased)
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It is a well-known fact that combat requires fitness. What is less well
known is the fact that physical fitness is directly connected to the
soldier's ability to withstand the mental stresses of battle. Further, the
level of physical fitness is directly connected to the ability of the
soldier to avoid post-traumatic stress. Linda K. Miller and Keith

Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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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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In Vietnam and in World War II, most 18-year-old kids responded with nausea
and trembling after the first time they had to kill in combat. They pulled
the trigger, and then watched as another human being fell at close range,
gurgling and dying. Though many of these young warriors vomited after their
first kill, they found that the next one was easier because they knew what
to expect. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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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
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If the voice is squeaky from stress, that is "condition red" loss of fine
motor control. Don't let such a person control a vehicle during a
high-speed chase. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar
(paraphrased)
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Words have power. Don't call them "shooters", but "mass murderers". If the
shooter is the bad guy, if the word shooter is a synonym for mass murderer
then if you are the a shooter you are automatically the bad guy.
Additionally, these are not shootings. They are massacres. The Boston
Massacre left five dead, and it was one of the events that set off the
American Revolution. The infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre left seven
dead. These historical "massacres" were famous, but add up the Boston
Massacre and the St. Valentine's Day Massacres, then double that number,
and you still have more dead in Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech. These are
massacres, and this is the term we should use. I believe our societys
failure to call these events by their proper term as just another symptom
of our deep denial as to the full magnitude of this problem. It is also a
way to make the very act of "shooting" a vile and evil crime. Don't fall
into that trap. Words have power. Don't use euphemisms, and don't debase
the tools, skills and acts that you use to save lives. Lt. Col. Dave

Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)

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Terrorists like to shoot people trying to rescue people. Smoke grenades
provide concealment to ruin their aim. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet
Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)
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Crime statistics tend to be under-reported. This makes you look good in the
short run, and gets your budget slashed so you can't keep people safe in
the long run. We must all work to make crime reports accurately reflect the
problem, instead of bowing to political pressure. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman,

The Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)

http://tipyomi-sender.appspot.com/showtip/Sheepdog%20Tip%20of%20the%20Day/After%20Combat/37

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The mental program starts a few seconds prior to firing the shot. It's
short: four or five steps, each described by only two or three key words.
Each step causes you to carry out an important procedure or set of
procedures that you need to do consistently for each shot. An example of a
mental program (and a very good starting place) is as follows: Breathe and
relax. Correct target. Level. Sight picture, sight picture . You must not
include anything to do with the actual manipulation of the trigger, because
trigger control must be a subconscious act that automatically happens
during the last step of the mental program (sight picture, sight
picture .). You remain focused on the perfect sight picture while you
subconsciously squeeze the trigger until the rifle fires. Linda K. Miller

and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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Pomerleau and Lazzarini found that when the average police officer
experiences a stress induced (i.e., adrenaline-induced) heart rate increase
in the area of 145 beats per minute (bpm), there is a significant breakdown
in performance. But this is not true for everyone. Apparently, if you have
practiced the required skills extensively, you can "push the envelope" of
Condition Red, enabling extraordinary performance at accelerated heart rate
levels. Let us call this zone, roughly between 145 and 175 bpm, "Condition
Gray." (Beyond Condition Gray is "Condition Black," an area marked by
catastrophic breakdown of mental and physical performance.) Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Combat
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We have to acknowledge that decision making is a skill that comes naturally
to some and not to others. Some people excel at analytical decision making,
while others are more comfortable in the realm of intuition. This is an
example of the wide variety of individual personal traits, not a value
judgment. Just because you do not naturally make a quick decision does not
make you a bad person, or even a bad fighter. It is a trait you must
recognize, though, to maximize your skills and be able to make critical
decisions in a timely manner in combat. Christopher Brennan, The Combat
Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness
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It's always a good idea to have a collection of stress relievers in your
toolbox, something you can pull out and use when a situation is threatening
to get the best of you. No matter how well prepared you are, no matter how
well you control your thoughts, sometimes the situation just crashes
through all of that and your adrenaline spikes and you need to deal with
the stress NOW. Linda K. Miller and Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental
Marksmanship
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The fundamental rule of warrior leadership is to punish in private and
praise in public. Report all failures and problems up the chain of command,
but report successes to everyone. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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In the Art of War, Clausewitz talks of "the fog of war" and its impact on
the ability of armies to be successful on the field of battle. The
commander who can minimize the fog of war, minimize uncertainty, and
maximize the individual soldier's sense of duty and mission will
ultimately be successful on the field of battle. 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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In 1910, the average person slept nine hours a night. As we made technical
progress to conquer the night, we created working environments where people
could be expected function in a 24/7 manner. The average American now
sleeps approximately 6.5 hours per night. Our need for sleep has not
changed in a hundred years. We have not developed an adaptation that
reduces our need for sleep. We are simply robbing ourselves of a vital
component of our continued health and productivity. Christopher Brennan,

The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness

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Flash bangs are a great tool that saves lives in these tragic, violent
times, but most police officers and soldiers do not carry them on a daily
basis. If you carry a weapon, however, you have a "flash bang." You pull
the trigger, it flashes and it bangs. We know that a firearm is a
psychologically daunting instrument. If you are a police officer, you must
understand that in a large percentage of combat situations, the perpetrator
is going to fire the first shot--meaning that you begin the engagement on
the receiving end of a flash bang. Proper mindset and realistic training to
develop autopilot responses can help warriors to overcome this problem.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat

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Our warriors are the ones who create the social foundation of safety. They
are the ones who face down the Universal Human Phobia, the most toxic,
corrosive, destructive element that can impact our society. They are the
foundation of the building, and if the foundation of the building crumbles,
the building will fall. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock (one of the U.S. Marine Corps' top snipers
in Vietnam and subject of the book, Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills)
tells of how he used a mental picture of "getting in the bubble" when it
was time to fire a shot. This allowed him to shut everything else out that
might cause a distraction so he could focus on firing the perfect shot.
While in the bubble, he saw only sight picture and target. He didn't feel
the rain running down his neck, the insects biting him, or even the snakes
crawling nearby. It was like a cone of concentration that allowed him to
shoot a perfect shot no matter what was happening around him. Once the shot
was fired, he was back into the scan mode, making the conscious mind do its
job, bringing his situational awareness back on line. Linda K. Miller and

Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship

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Make it easy to lock doors from the inside. This is true in schools,
workplaces, homes, or anywhere else that you may need to "secure". Putting
a key in a lock is a fine motor skill, and when you're stressed in a
lockdown situation you lose fine motor skills. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The

Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)

http://tipyomi-sender.appspot.com/showtip/Sheepdog%20Tip%20of%20the%20Day/Before%20Combat/190