Situational awareness, Code White to Code Orange, an excerpt from “Think Ahead”, U.S. Army Aviation Digest, HERE.
Situational
awareness is often thought of only in regard to military situations, but it
applies in your day-to-day world and in your travels through the
wilderness. Situational awareness is a
skill, and it needs to be practiced and improved. However, lately, it sometimes it seems to be
an almost forgotten skill, and currently it seems to be at an all time low,
both out there on the streets and out in the wilderness. Nobody is paying any attention; they are lost
in their technology! I know plenty of
people like that and I know that you know people like that too. So what good is being prepared and learning
and practicing survival skills if you aren’t going to pay attention?!
While
being hyper-vigilant can make you crazy, a lack of vigilance can make you
dead! Somewhere there has to be a happy
medium and personally I would rather err on the side of caution. I mean being dead, kinda sucks! So, let’s talk about situational awareness.
Situational
Awareness?
So,
what is situational awareness?
Situational awareness is more than just being unplugged from your
technology and being aware of the world around you by observing or gathering
information; it is also understanding or interpreting what you observe
happening around you and anticipating how the current conditions will change
and making plans to overcome any potential problems. It can be on both a narrow, short-term,
tactical level, which is close range and only covers minutes or hours, or on a
more strategic level, that is broader and deeper in scope and time.
For
the purpose of today’s article, I am going to be talking about situational
awareness only in the narrow, closeup, short-term tactical sense.
There
are different levels of situational awareness, starting with condition white
and ending with condition black, to reflect your different levels of awareness
and preparation.
Condition
white, describes a person in an unaware, distracted or completely oblivious and
unprepared state. Unfortunately, it
describes most of the people that you interact with on a daily basis. They are busy chatting with someone, or on
the phone, they are listening to music, or watching a video, or reading a
book. They are narrowly focused and are
not using their peripheral vision.
People in this state of awareness are victims waiting for someone or
something to victimize them.
The
next state of awareness is condition yellow, which is a state of relaxed
passive awareness. This state describes
a person who is noticing the world around them and who will notice something
odd or out of place. People usually
cycle back and forth, in between condition white and condition yellow. People who are situationally aware, often
will do a quick check of their environment, going into condition yellow, before
sliding back into condition white.
A
wilderness example of condition yellow would be noticing a line of thunder
clouds on the western horizon headed your way.
If
circumstances in your environment require that you pay active attention, then
you have moved into condition orange. In
condition orange, you have observed and understood that a situation exist that
is a potential threat, and you have to anticipate how the current conditions might
change and make plans to avoid the danger.
In condition orange, you have the time to prepare, plan and position
yourself to meet the perceived threat.
In any situation of a perceived threat, don’t forget the rule of “waiting
for the other shoe to drop” which is similar to the “plus one rule”,
and recommends to always be prepared for the next threat, that is inevitably following
the one that you have already noticed1. Don’t become focused only on the perceived
threat that you see, continue to stay alert and look for additional threats.
A
wilderness example of condition orange would be hearing thunder from the
advancing clouds just to the west of you.
If you can hear thunder, then the lightning can hit you and you need get
off the water, if you are traveling by boat, or move to a lower altitude, if
hill or mountain walking, or find shelter away from open areas, cliffs, or tall trees.
In
condition red you are in danger, and you must react. This is where the fight and flight of “Fight,
Flight or Freeze” response occurs. Don’t
forget to continue to stay alert and look for additional threats and be
prepared for them as they happen.
A
wilderness example of condition red would be if lightning is striking around you, you need to spread out if you are in a group, get small and try to insulate
yourself from the ground. Don’t forget
to be conscious of the potential for hypothermia as the temperature drops due
to the storm, aggravated by the wind and the wet.
Condition
black is when you are overwhelmed and overloaded, and in the “Fight, Flight
or Freeze” response you will only be able to freeze or panic. In condition black you will not be able to
respond to a threat in any successful or skilled manner. If you are walking around in condition white
and are suddenly surprised, condition black is usually what follows.
Improving Situational
Awareness
Okay,
situational awareness is important, so what can I do improve my awareness of the world around me?
It could
happen to you
The movie poster for, It Could Happen To You, 1937, Republic Pictures.
It
COULD happen to you, although most people choose to ignore this reality, preferring
to believe that it can’t happen to them, that accidents, bad weather, attacks,
becoming “misplaced”, or otherwise having an emergency, is something that only happens
to the other guy.
Unplug!
Unplug! From Wikimedia, “A set of North American AC power plugs”, by Evan-Amos, HERE.
Unplug,
unplug, unplug! Pull your head out of
your technology long enough to observe the world around you. A moment or two at condition yellow, to check
your surroundings, before slipping back into condition white will make a vast
improvement in your situational awareness.
Keep your
head on a swivel…
Keep your head on a swivel, modified by the Author from “Think Ahead”, U.S. Army Aviation Digest.
Keep
your head on a swivel! Active scanning
or keeping your head on a swivel is looking around you and observing what is on
both sides of you and what is going on close up, at mid-range and long
range.
My
first lesson in situational awareness came from my older cousin, who from 1975
to 1979 served in a recon platoon, in the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion,
26th Infantry. He told me
that I should constantly scan ahead of me, from right to left and then back
again, left to right, starting about 50 feet away from me and then proceeding
outward. I started doing that then, and
I still do it today, all these years later, whenever I am out and about.
Check your
six!
Check your six, graphic by the Author.
“Check your six!” Check
your six is an expression that means to look behind you, to the six o’clock
position on a clock, since looking forward is 12 o’clock,
for danger. But it is not only danger
you are looking for, look also for landmarks.
As you travel in the wilderness, look back along the trail, and “check
your six”, so that you will know what your return path will look like. As you can see in the pictures below, it
always looks different.
The same 30 feet, or 9 meters of trail. Notice how different the trail looks, looking forward (the picture on the left was taken from “a” while looking towards “b”), compared to when you are looking backwards (the picture on the right was taken at “b” while looking towards “a”). Graphics and photographs by the Author.
Be aware and pay attention to distinctive trees, rocks, and other
terrain features that are along your path as you travel through the
wilderness. Pay close attention to the
landmarks you pass by, on your way to “there”, wherever there is, since
these landmarks will be important clues to look for, on your way back from “there”. Memorize where distinctive landmarks are,
relative to where your starting point or camp is, so that you can find your way
back again.
Use your
peripheral vision
Peripheral vision and field of view, modified by the Author from Wikimedia, by Zyxwv99, November 29, 2014, HERE and HERE.
Use
your peripheral vision to look for movement or observe changes in your
environment that are taking place on either side of you. Many people become so focused on what is
directly happening in front of them that they neglect to use their peripheral
vision.
So
don’t be caught unawares in condition white.
Unplug and slip into condition yellow as needed and be aware of what is
around you. Remember by combining the
use of your peripheral vision with active scanning and checking your six you
will be able to develop a 360o mental picture of what is going on
around you.
For
more on being aware in the wilderness read, “The Top Ten Wilderness Survival
Skills...Number Two©”, HERE,
and “There and Back Again...Finding Your Way©”, HERE.
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “The Ignis-Fatuus or
Will-O’-The-Wisp”, where we will talk about marsh lights, and whether or not there
are scientific facts behind the story of the Will-O’-The Wisp or whether it is Stingy
Jack and his hellfire lantern or supernatural phenomenon.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1
The “plus one rule.” From the “Color
Code of Awareness” by 88 Tactical, HERE. “The plus one rule is as follows: If there
is one bad guy, count on there being another. If the aggressor has one weapon,
expect them to have another. If you face one attack, be prepared to face
another attack”.
Sources
88 Tactical, “Color Code
of Awareness”, [© 2022 88 Tactical], https://88tactical.com/color-codes-of-awareness/,
October 13, 2022
Pursley, Charles C.,
Capt.; “Think Ahead”, U.S. Army Aviation Digest,
Vol. 9, No. 11, November 1963, p. 13, https://books.google.com/books?id=mZXIHMp3gVIC&pg=RA5-PP4&dq=United+States+Army+Aviation+Digest+%22think+ahead%22+1963&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXr8OMw9n6AhWEVjUKHRTcDBYQ6AF6BAgJEAI#v=onepage&q=United%20States%20Army%20Aviation%20Digest%20%22think%20ahead%22%201963&f=false,
accessed October 11, 2022
Wikimedia,
“A set of North American AC power plugs”, by Evan-Amos, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NEMA-AC-Power-Plugs.jpg,
accessed on October 15, 2022
Wikimedia, “Human field of view (FOV)”, by Zyxwv99,
November 29, 2014, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peripheral_vision.svg,
accessed on October 15, 2022
Wikimedia, “Range of
field of view (FOV)”, by Zyxwv99, November 29, 2014, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Field_of_view.svg,
accessed on October 15, 2022
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