SEAL Survival Guide (67 page)
Read SEAL Survival Guide Online
Authors: Cade Courtley
1. CHANGE YOUR ROUTINE
If you always leave your house or apartment at eight
A.M
., for example, leave earlier or later. Enter a highway at a different exit, or take a different road or street to the store you usually go to. There are many ways to alter your routine without changing your life. But this will make you an unpredictable target, and those looking for an easy mark will likely look for another victim.
2. LOSE YOUR EYES: SURVEILLANCE DETECTION ROUTE (SDR)
If you want to determine if someone is actually following you, there are a number of ways to do so. If you suspect someone is trailing your car, make a series of right or left turns, or box around a particular area until you return to the same spot. No casual driver would still be behind you at this point. Do the same thing if on foot in a city. If you do this effectively, you could even have the person who is following you now in front of you. You can wave or take their picture. At any rate, you have won by letting them know that you see them.
3. SET UP AN AMBUSH
If those following seem to be more sinister, such as a group of men in a car, you can lead them into a trap. Once you have determined that you’re being followed, you can feign that you are still unaware. Use your survival skill of remaining calm under pressure. Continue your route, but call the police and inform them of the situation. You can describe the car or person in detail and coordinate with the police to lead the potential attackers to a specific location.
TORTURE AND BEING HELD HOSTAGE
Torture is any method or means used to inflict extreme pain and suffering for the purposes of punishment, to extract information, or to intimidate a person into total submission. In reality, it’s an attempt to kill a person without their dying, through bringing them to the brink of death. The history of torture and the list of devices used to inflict hurt is long; it shows how perversely inventive humankind can be when it comes to devising methods to inflict pain. Torture can be either mental or physical abuse. There are techniques to help you endure it and come out alive, if you should ever find yourself in such a situation. (See also “Tiger Kidnapping,”
page 187
, and “Trouble in a Foreign Country,”
page 286
.) It will test every aspect of your SEAL survival mindset to make it through the torture alive. To survive, you will
have to notch up your mental toughness to levels you never thought possible—but it can be done.
One civilian, British consultant Peter Moore, survived an incredible 947 days of continual torture in Iraq. Upon his release, he said he endured by telling himself he would not grovel or beg his captors to spare his life. Instead, he focused on pleasant boyhood memories during the ordeal to help him cope. He counted each escape from death as a little victory and survived.
Torture’s Many Forms
It could be argued that the psychological aspect of torture is far more damaging than the specific acts. It’s not only being captured and imprisoned or bound but the terror and fear that arises in anticipation of when the next session will begin that creates extreme stress and trauma. In modern times, torture is still widely employed throughout the world. Here are some methods used:
•
Environmental manipulation:
Sleep deprivation, isolation, sensory deprivation, and noise abuse.
•
Pharmacological manipulation:
The use of hallucinatory or muscle-paralyzing drugs.
•
Coercive methods:
Being forced to watch the torture of friends and/or family.
•
Somatic methods:
This is any manner of physical abuse, such as beatings, burning with cigarettes, electric shock treatments, rape, or starvation.
•
Suffocation:
This includes waterboarding and having your head forced into a bucket or container filled with excrement or placed inside an airtight bag.
•
Psychological methods:
This includes mock executions, such as firing at your head a pistol that is perhaps filled with blanks.
Waterboarding is a torture technique used since the Middle Ages. A person is strapped to a board, inclined with the feet raised and the head lowered. The head may be wrapped with cellophane at the forehead and chin or bound in some way. Waves of water are poured on the face and inevitably get in the nose and mouth, which produces the sensation of drowning.
Why Me?
Although the reasons vary, it will become immediately apparent why you happened to have been chosen as a target for torture. You could have a job that gives you access to large amounts of money or to classified and sensitive information. It could be due to your ethnicity or religion if you are in a foreign country. Or you could simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as during a home invasion or even a carjacking. Regardless of the reason, you are now in a situation that will require the greatest degree of physical and mental toughness. Prepare for your comfort zone to be radically challenged.
Accepting Your Situation
Once you have been captured and are controlled by the abductors, it is best not to get too far ahead by imagining what might happen next. In fact, if you accept the present situation, you can then work on making yourself calm. You will need your mind to be in this state to think clearly and look for an opportunity to escape. The goal is to begin working on a survival plan by observing every detail of your situation and the environmental factors in which you find yourself.
Stress Management
Immediately start your combat breathing technique. If you allow yourself to panic, you won’t be able to logically address the situation. You need to keep a focused mind and accept that you will probably be beaten and possibly tortured.
Time
This is the one and only element in a torture scenario that your captors have no control over. They can’t stop time. So if they can’t control this, you must embrace it. This is also your best friend. The longer you are able to stay alive, the greater the chance that you will be rescued or set free. Again think about little victories:
That punch didn’t hurt as much as the last one. He must be getting tired because he’s starting to sweat from hitting me. Well, I still have two teeth left. I was begging to die five minutes ago but I’m still here.
Create a ticking clock in your head and constantly say to yourself, “I just survived another second [minute, hour, day].” Do whatever you can to gain time. This may all sound very disturbing, but given the gravity of a torture scenario, you may have only these little victories to cling to.
Escape
Always plan to escape; this is what will keep you alive and able to endure. Make your mental movie of how you will do this. This will also give your mind a positive thing to work on, help you stay numb, and hopefully serve you well. Your captors may see a curled-up, bloody, semiconscious individual strapped to a chair. But the entire time your brain is at work, looking for that window of opportunity to crack and allow you to flee.
Become the Gray Man
In a torture situation, the captors want to prove immediately that they have total dominance and complete control over your fate. It’s all about proving that they have the power of determining whether
you will live or not. Your goal is to appear as calm and submissive as possible. If, for example, you were abducted in a foreign country, you want to give the impression that you are a face in the crowd and a person of no value. Become the gray man, a term used in intelligence circles that refers to a person who blends into any scene or situation without drawing attention while concealing his survival knowledge and skills. You want to de-escalate this situation by appearing compliant. The worst move at this point would be to aggressively resist. This will only increase the abuse. The more personable and calm you are, the greater the possibility you have of establishing communication with your assailants. It is ideal to attempt to humanize the attackers, such as calling them by name. Again, your goal at this point is to make it to the next minute.
