Indigenous Ability

There is not a Warrior culture, a “preppers” blog, a survival account, or an archetype of intrepid explorers that does not tout and shout the ideal of preparation.  No one doubts the value of this advice. Preparation is no guarantee of survival, but also, no one doubts that odds increase for the prepared soul. “ Chance favors the prepared mind .”-Louis Pasteur But, to quibble with the illustrious Dr. Pasteur, that quote is only partially true. Case in point, we all know [ ALL know ] that one vital aspect of the road to good health is moderated food intake, meals that are more wise than not, and getting in a good level of physical activity that robustifies the myriad physical processes that make up our physical self. These choices go a long way towards making the day to day less grumbling, and in hard times give us a higher baseline to work from towards recovery. Again, we all “know” this advice to be true, our minds are prepared but…have a look a round y...

There is a surprisingly long history of hair-pulling in combat history, both sportive and on the battlefield. Today we’ll confine ourselves to sportive instances of what we now perceive to be unsportsmanlike behavior. Combat hair-pulling, or pugna capillos trahens , if you’d like to gussy it up a bit with Latin, or get a bit more primal with the Comanche tso’ya naraut’u [literally “hair fight”] was permitted in more than a few organized endeavors, and in some cases, out and out encouraged. Before we continue, if anyone doubts the efficacy of hair-pulling in sportive combat, please stretch the memory back to UFC 3 with the iconic match between the up to that point mighty dominant Royce Gracie and the pony-tailed behemoth that was Kimo Leopold. Royce gamely takes the “W” in that match, but if anyone thinks that would have been the outcome had not that handy pony-tail been available, I suggest a second look and re-evaluation of opportunistic handles. It seems the early Greek...

  “ It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs .”-Aristotle It is remarkable how often street self-defense solutions are offered in easy streamlined packages along the lines of “If A does this, you do this…”, or “If a guy is holding a knife like this, you should…” The flip-side is how often I (and every person who offers him or herself as someone with some self-protection advice) are encountered with questions along the lines of “What would you do if a guy [insert random concrete example here]?” My response is invariably disappointing, it’s always “I don’t know.” Or the less disappointing, but still essentially the same “It depends.” These sorts of questions and ABC tactical offerings are closer to acceptable in the combat sport arena as these are games...

[ Excerpted from our book No Second Chance ] We’ve already established that predators of all species seek the path of least resistance when selecting prey. That rule hold true whether we are discussing victim selection or property selection. To further illustrate this point, place yourself in the predator role momentarily and answer the following questions honestly. You decide to steal a car and are presented with two vehicles sitting side-by-side. One is locked and appears to have an alarm system activated, the other is unlocked and the keys are in the ignition. Which do you choose? You are walking through the mall and decide a little extra cash would be nice. You start scanning people in your immediate area and notice two women waiting at a counter, their backs are turned. One is holding her purse to her side, the clasp is closed, the other has her purse slung towards her back, the mouth of the purse is wide open with contents easily in view and easily accessib...

You want a quick and easy lesson in how to navigate in a world that contains predators? Well, turn on the TV and find Animal Planet or any channel featuring non-interference nature-documentary programming. We’re all familiar enough with the sort of programming I mean that the following example will be immediately familiar. Picture the arid plains of the African Serengeti during the dry season. The landscape is one of various shades of tans and deep browns. The sole watering hole in the area is trafficked by a wide array of species, both predator and prey, that one does not usually see in such close proximity if the need for water didn’t hold precedence.           Now, picture a herd of gazelle or springbok navigating towards the watering hole. We, the TV viewers, have been shown that there is a stalking lion in the area but the herd, not having paid their cable bill, are unaware of this fact. While unaware of the definite presence of a major predator...

We are all hunters, predators, warriors. Every one of us. I do not care whether you are a card-carrying member of PETA, a strict vegetarian, an avowed pacifist, or have never laid a finger on a hunting rifle or compound bow let alone fired a bullet or bolt into an animal. We are all hunters by the sheer dint of historical and biological forces. We are all the offspring of forebears that hunted for millennia and thrived because of that evolved prowess for hunting. Let’s toss all the contemporary arguments pro or con hunting aside, the titled observation is not telling anyone to abandon whatever moral precepts they possess regarding hunting, animals, and any perceived cruelty to animals. To declare human beings as a hunting species is not a value judgment but a statement of fact. Evolutionary biologists, paleo-ethologists, and anthropologists from Robert Ardrey to Richard Wrangham have gone so far as to say that what makes the human species so distinctly different from it...