Today, let’s talk about one of the most serious issues facing any security-minded individual today—complacency. Complacency is basically having knowledge, skills, and abilities to ensure safety; but choosing to be lazy and not use them. Several dictionaries even include “unawareness” in their official definitions. In my opinion, complacency is one of—if not the biggest threat to #situationalawareness.
I’m going to share a quick personal story about complacency and a lesson I had to learn almost the hard way.
Early in my military career someone way up my chain of command started a poster campaign with helpful reminders. One of those reminders was “Complacency Kills”. That poster was hanging on the way to a certain post on a certain day; one at which I was manning at that time. It was early in our deployment, and it hadn’t been all that bad. There had been some IEDs, mortars, and pop-shots here and there, but no casualties—yet.
I was minding my own business (mistake no.1) standing my post with my Iraqi Army counterpart. I like to draw, and I had started sketching the view from my post. Trying to kill the time until my shift was over, I didn’t notice the guy walking out to the middle of the road across the bridge (approx. 300m). I looked up just in time to see him level his AK and start spraying in my direction. He caught me completely off-guard. Honestly, I was overwhelmed and unable to act at all. I froze. It seemed like I was frozen for 10 minutes, until I realized that he hadn’t actually emptied his 30rd mag yet, on full auto. Once my brain finally processed what was going on, I charged my 240 and went to work. By that time, the other three posts whose fields of fire allowed them to engage were also doing so. Thankfully, none of us were hurt. In fact, I don’t even think he hit our posts.
Being pretty low on my list of priorities at that point, I never moved my little sketch pad. Interestingly, I found that the empty shells that were ejected from the machine gun landed right on my paper, creating permanent imprints of their rims as they fell. Somewhere I still have that never-finished drawing.
What that whole experience did do, however, was to finally get me to think in terms of life and death. No longer was I quite so lax in my actions no matter what I was doing; guard posts, foot patrols, mounted patrols, and any other ops we had. That lesson saved my life on several other occasions throughout that deployment and later in life. I still rely on what I learned that day.
If you’d like to know more about how to combat #complacency and how to #commandyourspace without having to learn those lessons the hard way, contact us at pete.w@defensiveapplicationstraininggroup.com.
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