Greg Tambone consistently operates in some of the world’s most dangerous areas. Crime, cartel activity, murder, robbery. In this video, he shares some very important rules to safely navigate high-risk areas.
Rule number one is situational awareness. Staying safe requires you to strengthen your self-awareness muscle. Most people walk around in a distracted state and don’t pay attention to what’s going on around them. Not only does this mean they aren’t aware of any potential threats or aggressors, but it also has a secondary effect of making them look like a target. You must stay sharp, so you can learn to recognize, and thereby avoid threats. In a restaurant for example, sit back to the wall, making sure you can see what’s going on in the room. Know how to spot an aggressor, stay in lighted areas, make yourself a non-ideal target for predators. A good idea is to take a moment any time you are out and about to look around you, assess the people in your immediate vicinity, think up a plan of how you would safely get out of wherever you are if something bad happened. You will begin to become more conscious of both your surroundings and the attitude/abilities of those around you by continuing to think through these kinds of scenarios.
The only consistent change between normal, relatively non-violent areas and high-crime areas is that you must be more vigilant in the high threat areas. Knowing how to balance “Going Gray” with being a “hard target”, especially in dangerous locations, is going to do more to preserve your safety than perhaps any other tool or skills. Be a hard target but don’t go around looking for a fight, because you will always find one. By the same token, your body language must reflect that you are not prey, and that you will not give up easily if someone singled you out in a violent encounter. Unless for some reason your chosen role as “greyman” requires luxurious attire, dress down: no flashy clothes, expensive jewelry, or otherwise pricey items which might attract unnecessary attention. Finally, hard skills like martial arts training, lock picking, use of cover/concealment, improvised weapons, SERE techniques, disarm techniques, and counterespionage practices are last ditch effort skills that can mean the difference between life and death when trouble can no longer be avoided. These hard skills take years of practice and experience to integrate, so you should be practicing them now. If you haven’t developed the mindset and skillset ahead of time, it will be too late when needed in the danger zone.
Article by Dion Roloff