Back to Basics: Have a Plan – Podcast 325

Basic preparedness and self defense, have a plan.

This is back to some of the basics we all should review from time to time.

Do you have a plan for if things go wrong?

While no plan survives the first contact, the best part of your plan is the objective. In the Marine Corps, we called it the Commander’s Intent. You are going to do this so that this other thing can happen.

When you are the one making the plan, the first thing you need to know is what is the other thing that you want to happen.

I break my planning down into simple things, in this order:

• My Family’s Survival, Wife and Child come first and foremost
• My Survival comes next
• My family not getting physically hurt
• Me not getting physically hurt
• I protect those other people that are in my charge
• I protect friends and family
• I protect kids
• I protect other adults
• I don’t injure the bad guy if I don’t have to
• I protect my stuff
• I seek justice

Obviously protecting my family and myself is on the top of the list. Seeking justice and protecting my stuff is at the bottom of the list.

In the Marine Corps, we might also call this order of work/priorities in the mission.

During a horrible life-threatening situation, I do all things first and foremost to protect my family. Every plan I think about will be do blank so that my family can survive and getaway.

Morally this is your own judgment. For me, protecting people from top to bottom is really easy. I’ve thought about the list long and hard and can even tell you, I know I would protect my wife over my kid if I could only save one. Thankfully that is almost never the case and I don’t have to worry about it. But if I had to make the choice at the moment, I already know what I will go for first. Do you?

If you have to stand there and think about your list, it takes time. And as one of my old mentors use to say, you have the rest of your life to figure it. No matter how long or short that might be.

By making these plans and knowing your list, it keeps you from doing things that you should not, and that will get you killed or hurt.

A while back there was a story of a group of people that invaded a good guy’s home. The good guy was able to drive them out by yelling and screaming and having a gun. When the home invaders left the house, he pursued them out the front door. Someone in the waiting car shot our good guy.

If you look at my list, seeking justice is so very far down the list, that I would do everything else first. Our good guy did all the right things until he pursued the home invaders out the door. On his front yard, he met the real bad guy and it almost cost him his life. Was it worth it?

My plan is to secure my family, myself, anyone else in my charge, and then my stuff. Justice comes in the form of calling the police and having the home invaders arrested and going to jail. No vigilante justice or “in the heat of the moment” crap because I already know what I want the outcomes to be.

I hope you have basic plans set up for emergency situations. If there is a fire in your house, where do you go? If there is a fire in the hotel you are staying at, where are you going?

If someone breaks into your house, what’s your plan?

If you are out someplace and someone attacks you, what’s your plan?

If you are in your car and get stopped by an attacker what are you going to do? And to what end?

You should formulate plans for yourself now. While you are at home and have nothing at stake. When the time comes you will not be thinking clearly and you may not have time to think at all.

If you have a plan, and a commander’s intent, you know what direction you should be moving without thinking and you can react faster and better to whatever life-threatening thing is happening.

Stay Safe,

Ben

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