^ Unfortunately, millertyme, the stuff they teach us about safety is really naive stuff like what your mommy would tell you. "Don't hang out with bad people." "Don't be alone." "Don't go out after dark." "Call the police if you feel unsafe." "Don't trust strangers." There's not a word of how to protect yourself should things go bad.
There's another old saying - "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." The thinking summarized neatly in trainer John Farnam's "three stupids" lecture (see
http://www.defense-training.com/quips/2003/19Mar03.html for the whole discussion) is a big chunk of the kind prevention that actually does work to preclude many problems on the street from ever arising.
Not necessarily ALL problems however...
But if this isn't quite the case and you are surprised, how should one react upon realizing what is happening?
As the trainer known as Southnarc puts it, "Sometimes your awareness fails." Face it, we are all human, none of us is 100% at the top of our game 100% of the time. Sometimes there are distractions, and sometimes situations evolve that give a would-be predator or predators the sense that you are a good risk for victimization.
So how should you react if attacked unexpectedly? Best answer I can offer is, you react as the circumstances dictate. Is there a verbal pre-attack interview taking place? Might be a good time to have studied a little verbal judo, adopt an interview stance and do a few other things that might help convince your assailant or assailants that they have made a serious miscalculation in the victim-selection process. Is the first awareness you have that an attack is taking place the explosive concussive effect of a blow to the head and the stars and tweety birds suddenly dancing in front of your half-stunned eyes? If that's the case you have a a LOT of catching up to do, and some kind of training that included frequent loud exhortations from your trainer to "GET BACK IN THE FIGHT" might possibly be of some help- IF you had been willing to find such training in advance of need and take advantage of it, that is. But it is entirely possible that you can't catch up, if the attack was sudden and brutal enough, and it's possible you're had no matter what else you might ordinarily have been able to do. Face it, sometimes the good guys loose.
In short there is no single answer to all the multitude of situations that might evolve out there on the street. We could "what-if" the subject to death and still not cover all the possibilities. Anyone who really does want to be able to answer this kind of question that might arise in the course of their own lives is going to seek the tools that are widely available to help define some of the possible answers to those questions in advance of need. Those tools are primarily TRAINING, PRACTICE and STUDY.
IF it happens to you, what you know already might be enough to see you through. Or it might not be. What you do about that is your call.
fwiw,
lpl
