One of these days you may find yourself in a position where you have to defend your life, your family or your property. In The Realities of Interpersonal Combat: How Are You Preparing?, the author explores personal defense strategies that primarily involve non-traditional weapons, just in case you don’t have the ability to access your firearm.

Office Tackleberry on Security Awareness:

Security awareness needs to be a way of life for all of us because prevention is the best defense.  Now, I am not talking about paranoia, but preparation and practice.  One such example of being security minded is locking your doors once you are in your house or car.  How many times have you seen someone get into their car and talk on their cell phone or do some other task while being totally oblivious to what’s going around them?  Maybe you have even done this yourself.

Speaking of locking your doors, how many of you consistently make sure that the door from the garage to your house is always locked?  I can’t even begin to guess the number of burglaries that I have been on where the offender(s) found the victim’s garage door open and the offender(s) then gained entry into the home via the unlocked man door.  As part of your daily OPSEC for your residence, make sure the garage door is shut and the man door is locked.

—

Entire chapters can be written on personal and property security awareness.  But, suffice it say, security awareness needs to become a way life because, especially post-WTSHTF, your life may literally depend on it.

Office Tackleberry on Hand-to-Hand Combat:

I personally believe that everyone should learn how to defend themselves with both empty hands and weapons.  Even now, depending on the size of your area, the number of officers on duty, and some other factors, our response to your 911 call could be anywhere from two minutes to an hour.  Even if our response is only two minutes, when fighting for your life that may seem like an hour.  Post-WTSHTF, police response may be non-existent.

—

You should train in a system that teaches you to defend common attacks, encourages aggression when appropriate, limits ground work at the beginning levels, works in multiple attacker scenarios on a regular basis and teaches empty hand vs. weapons at the lower levels.

—

If your budget allows, I believe each household member should receive competent H2H training.  Encourage your spouse/significant other to train but, when it comes to your children, especially younger ones, I think you should mandate it.

Office Tackleberry on Cheating Fair:

What are you willing to do to stop a violent assault against you or loved one?  Are you willing to scratch, bite, or dig your thumb in someone’s eye?  Are you willing to hit someone with a lamp, run them over with a car, plunge a butcher knife into them, or stab them in the neck with a pen?

These are questions you must ask yourself ahead of time and be mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually prepared to do what is necessary to prevail.

One aspect of not cheating fair is using your environment.  Take a look around at the area you are in right now.  What items do you see that you could defend yourself or someone else with?  What could become a barrier between you and your attacker?  What could you strike or stab an attacker with?  Is there anything that you could throw on an attacker that could cause pain, like hot coffee?  If you are at home, how quickly could you get to a firearm should you have picked one out for home defense?  Knowing your environment is a security awareness concept that you should be practicing constantly.

Officer Tackleberry explores personal defense further, providing anecdotes and situations he has found himself in during his years as a police officer.

Home defense, personal protection and overall awareness are not skills you should be acquiring for a doomsday SHTF scenario, they are skills that you may need to apply at anytime, including in our modern-day civilized society.

Read Officer Tackleberry’s Full Article…