Overcoming Terrorism with Social Resistance

Brussels remains at the highest level of alert against terrorist attacks.

It might be that their intelligence service have evidence that give reason to expect attack.

Hopefully would-be killers will be arrested before they act.

There is, though, a chance that some of our fellow citizens will suddenly find themselves in a life and death situation. The probability of being in that situation is probably less than winning the Lottery, but still -It Could Be You.

Imagine that you are in a restaurant, and suddenly you hear the dreaded "Allahu Akbar" shout, and then you hear shots. LOUD shots. You look up, and 3 metres from you stands a man carrying a gun, with his back to you. A surge of adrenaline, (the fight or flight hormone) hits. You get an altered perception of time and space. This Is It.

You have two options.

First option, get under the table and expect to die. He can stroll around, picking you off one by one, at leisure. Let's call this O1.

Second option: rush forward and hit him with a rugby tackle, low down, preferably behind the knees. Call it O2

There are two possible consequences to option 2:

Either, he is momentarily surprised, then shoots you and everyone else that he can. (O21)

Or, other citizens rush forward with you, in an act of social resistance. Instead of turning inwards, individualistically, we will act as one, act in unison. We will overpower the attacker, concentrating on controlling his hands (O22).

Two possible outcomes:

All the attackers are successfully overcome in this way. (O22S)

Or, he may be wearing a bomb (O22B), and he may be able to detonate it without his hands.
If the bomb goes off everyone who rushed him dies (but they were going to die anyway, and their bodies absorb some of the blast, so their deaths will be meaningful.

So those are three options: O1, O22S, O22B

O1 has the worst outcome.
O22B is better than O1
O22S is the best outcome.

What we need to maximise the chance of O22S is for us to push for this O2 thinking to become universal.

O2 can be summarised as

"If some bastard starts shooting, I'm going to rush him, and I expect back-up".

In the battle situation this can be shortened to

"Get The Bastard"


There is no point in expecting Government to give advice and leadership on this. I've asked them, twice, and they will have nowt to do with it. I think they fear getting sued by someone who has a go and gets hurt.

This point of view carries some merit, but should not be the last word on the matter.

The subject deserves discussion.

Terrorism brings violence against vulnerable unarmed, civilians.
It is the warfare practised by cowards.
When cowards find that people fight back, they tend to lose heart.

O2 is the one to go for. Not least, because if this GTB people-power is consistently used and would-be perps get caught alive and tried, this might, possibly, go some way to help to put an end to terrorism as a tactic.


More:
The Schuringa Rule
Why the government does not want us to tackle gunmen
Spotting the flaw in the Government's logic