For Anonymous

Not all the comments make it to the comment section. I personally only ever delete obvious spam, but occasionally I get an e-mail notice and the comment isn't on the blog, so I assume the author deleted it.

A recent one wanted to share a criticism: that I focus mostly on ambush and he has felt it far more likely, for him, for things to get physical because he chose to intervene in a third-party situation.

First thing- I hope the comment wasn't withdrawn out of fear of my reaction to criticism. Sure, I may go off into a dark room and cry a little, but that won't come out on the blog. No one needs to know.

Second, I've adressed this once that I remember, heavily focused on how complicated a question this really is. You can read that one here.

Third, and this is the meat for this post-- yeah, I'm biased towards ambush survival, largely because that is where I see the biggest holes and the highest stakes and the least choices.

Not many people teach third party intervention. Even the stuff at our academy was weak to non-existent. That is a hole. But it's pretty clear that you aren't teaching it. I could ask any martial artist if they practiced third party defense and they would go over their last couple of classes and say either, "yeah" or, "no, not really."

That's cool. But ask a roomful of martial artists if they ever train against surviving an ambush or a sudden assault and, IME, most will assert positively that they practice it all the time...and almost every element of a sudden assault will be completely unfamiliar.

Few people practice third party interventions...but almost nobody pretends they do. People believe they are practicing assault survival frequently when they are not. I consider that a bigger and more insidious hole.

The stakes are very high in ambush survival. The true ambush is a pretty rare assault, but it is always, or almost always, very serious. For all the marbles.

They can be high in third party interventions, but not always. The fact that you are there to intervene means that the act happened with an audience. The presence of an audience is an indicator of social violence. Social violence rarely results in lethal force. There are exceptions. The status seeking show, certain forms of the group monkey dance (betrayal or an insecure leader/group) can both be hideously brutal forms of social violence...and there is always the possibility that a predator missed you in his witness scan.

Intervening there are a plethora of choices. You don't need to get involved. You don't need to act immediately-- you can get help and attention and marshall resources. You can go in at a number of different levels (the presence of a witness alone may make a predator scurry off.) YOU get to pick your angle of approach and position.

Under an ambush... nope. It's on. Any choices or even information gathering take time and time is damage. the bad guy picked time and position and place and distance, not you. All the lower levels of force are off the table...

So, yeah. I concentrate on the ambush. I can teach the other stuff, and sometimes I enjoy it. You can really use the threat's adrenalized state and make some cool stuff happen.

But, unless you are embarrassing yourself (and you didn't) there's no reason to delete comments. Not on my account, anyway.