Spotting Danger Before It Spots You: Build Situational Awareness To Stay Safe

by Gary Dean Quesenberry, Dave Grossman (ret.) (Foreword by)

Overview

Spotting danger before it happens is a skill that can be developed and may even save your life.

Understand the threat

Build situational awareness

Develop personal defenses

A mother dropping her teenager off at the mall, a young man leaving home for college, a family about to head out on their first trip overseas. What do all of these people have in common? They all have a vested interest in their personal security and the wellbeing of those they love. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, there were an estimated 1.25 million violent crimes committed in the United States in 2018.

Make no mistake; in a world filled with crime and violence, you are your own last line of defense.

Continuing on the path of The Gift of Fear (Gavin deBecker), Spotting Danger Before It Spots You, author Gary Quesenberry breaks down the basic techniques necessary to help you develop good situational awareness and increase your levels of personal safety. Gary calls upon his extensive background as a Federal Air Marshal and defensive tactics instructor to explain these methods in simple terms that will greatly improve your general understanding of how, when and where violence occurs. He will then take the next critical step—providing you with the tools you need to properly identify and evade danger before it ever has a chance to materialize.

You will learn

• The common traits of predatory behavior
• How to conduct a personal “safety check”
• How to develop strong awareness skills
• What to do when you spot potential trouble
• Staying safe and living life free of worry and fear

“Today more than ever, it is imperative that we pay close attention to our surroundings and learn how to interpret what’s happening around us. Tragic events can often be both predictable and preventable.” — Federal Air Marshal Gary Quesenberry

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594397370
Publisher:	YMAA Publication Center
Publication date:	06/01/2020
Series:	Head's Up
Pages:	172
Sales rank:	673,401
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Gary Quesenberry is a US Army veteran and a career Federal Air Marshal. As a defensive tactics trainer for Federal and civilian services, he has devoted his life to studying the areas of violence and predatory behavior. Gary serves as the CEO of Quesenberry Personal Defense Training and has developed numerous basic and advanced level training courses focused on mental toughness, marksmanship, and defensive tactics. As a competitive pistol shooter, Gary has been featured on the History Channel’s hit television series Top Shot - Season 3 and Top Shot All-Stars. He has an extensive background in domestic and foreign counter-terror training and has worked in both the private and corporate sectors to help educate others on the importance of situational awareness, and personal safety. Gary resides in Hillsville, Virginia.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

PHASE ONE – Understand the threat

Chapter 1: The basics of predatory behavior

• 1.1 How predators choose their targets – The seven-second PROD
• 1.2 Perception
• 1.3 Risk
• 1.4 Observable value
• 1.5 Defenses
• 1.6 Think Like a Predator
• Situational Awareness in Action: The Foiled Millennium Terror Plot
• Exercise: Target Selection
• Key Points

Chapter 2: Conducting a self-assessment

• 2.1 Who would target you?
• 2.2 What do they want?
• 2.3 When would they strike?
• 2.4 Where would they strike?
• 2.5 Start Thinking Like a Protector
• Situational Awareness in Action: The Attempted Time Square Bombing
• Exercise: Using the Self-Assessment
• Key Points

PHASE TWO – Build your situational awareness

Chapter 3: The basics of awareness

• 3.1 Defining the threat – Perception vs. Reality
• 3.2 The levels of awareness
• 3.3 Understanding the Reactionary Gap
• Situational Awareness in Action: Joey Grundl’s Big Delivery
• Exercise: The What-If Game
• Key Points

Chapter 4: The next level of awareness – Comprehend, Identify, and Anticipate

• 4.1 Comprehend the situation
• 4.2 Identify what’s important
• 4.3 Anticipate outcomes
• 4.4 The Role of Intuition
• Situational Awareness in Action: Ten-Year-Old Danny DiPietro
• Exercise: Environmental KIMs Games
• Key Points

PHASE THREE – Develop personal defenses

Chapter 5: What comes next

• 5.1 Establishing a basis for action
• 5.2 Avoidance – The safest option
• 5.3 Escape
• 5.4 De-escalation
• 5.5 Confrontation
• Situational Awareness in Action: Lee Parker’s Backpack
• Exercise: Route Planning
• Key Points

Chapter 6: Reinforcing your defenses

• 6.1 Improving mindset
• 6.2 Minimizing distractions
• 6.3 Controlling fear
• 6.4 Building Confidence
• Situational Awareness in Action: Julianne Moore Stops a Kidnapper
• Exercise: Counting Drills
• Key Points

Chapter 7: Putting It All Together

• Situational Awareness in Action: Uber Hero Keith Avila
• Exercise: Six Steps to Spotting Trouble
• Key Points

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Editorial Reviews

"A work that is greater than the sum of its parts, and unlike anything else available on this critical topic. This book stands out because of Gary’s incredibly thorough and comprehensive presentation of situational awareness, a life-saving ability to spot danger in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

I have read many books on the subject, and I can honestly say that no one has even come close to matching Spotting Danger Before It Spots You when it comes to teaching situational awareness. This fundamental skill is key to surviving and overcoming the array of threats that confront the average citizen in the world today.

Armed with the skills taught in this book, you will not need to live in fear; you will live instead in a state of awareness and readiness.

—Dave Grossman, Lt. Colonel, US Army (ret.), author of On Killing, On Combat, and Assassination Generation, Director, Killology Research Group

A federal air marshal offers a guide to observing and evaluating your surroundings.

Quesenberry’s nonfiction debut draws on his 19 years of experience as an air marshal, a job that gives him “a first-class ticket into the world of covert surveillance, surveillance detection, and self-defense.” In hundreds of settings, he has been the person paid and expected to know what’s going on and to anticipate and counter any potential dangers. By contrast, as he quite rightly points out, most people relax themselves into a false sense of security by thinking “nothing will ever happen here” or “that would never happen to me.” But even the author’s cursory listing of some of the 21st century’s worst outbreaks of terrorist violence all over the world should make it clear to readers that they can no longer afford such attitudes—they must take a large part of their safety into their own hands. Quesenberry’s aim in his book is not only to change those attitudes, but also to arm readers with the basic perception shifts that will help them guard their own well-being. The foremost of these is “situational awareness,” which the author describes as “the ability to identify and process environmental cues to accurately predict the actions of others.” The adverb is crucial: Readers are gently admonished to discard their reflexive prejudices and assumptions and “identify and process” what they’re actually seeing in any environment (as the author points out, preset perceptions can sometimes blind a person to reality). In quick, sharply paced chapters full of well-chosen anecdotes and bulleted points, Quesenberry instructs readers on how to expand their awareness of the people and things in their immediate area, how to assume an aggressive mindset in order to anticipate how actual predators think, and even the basics of one-on-one self-defense. Much of what the author relates is elementary in nature—travel advisories all over the world urge some variation of situational awareness—but the clarity of this manual makes it stand out.

A vigorous and memorable primer on heightening awareness to prevent or counter danger.

—KIRKUS Reviews

From the Publisher