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UNCONDITIONAL SURVIVAL
Author: Scott Sonnon
When it comes to preparing yourself to deal with a violent attack, Scott Sonnon advocates the doctrine of unconditional survival. He devised it to fill what he perceived as a gap between the technique-oriented training most Americans undergo in the dojo and the reality of the street. None of Sonnons advice should be interpreted as an admonition to abandon the style you know and love; on the contrary, it is designed to help you make what you already know more accessible and effective should you ever find yourself in a true survival situation. Editor
1. In any physical conflict, your goal is unconditional survival. It is not to kill an assailant, nor to maim, injure or hurt him, for those are merely byproducts of pursuing your objective.
2. If you do not need to employ your survival tools or if you need to temporarily refrain from using them, they should remain invisible. Only if you are attacked should you allow others to be aware of your ability.
3. By themselves, prearranged self-defense techniques are not sufficient for combat. Unconditional survival demands extensive skill and preparation ranging from non-verbal communication to lethal force.
4. Symmetrical training cannot be relied upon. Too many martial arts instructors teach you how to use your skills only against practitioners of the same style.
5. Training should not involve any preconceived ideas about saving face or fighting fair. Survival is not about style, but about reality.
6. The key to survival does not lie in memorizing a couple quotes from Eastern philosophy, slapping a few flashy kicks and submission holds together, and starting a new style.
7. You must be prepared, both psychologically and physiologically, for the attack. Your awareness must be such that you have the ability to function under the intense strain of personal combat even though it will enable you to defuse or avoid 90 percent of all volatile situations.
8. If you understand only fighting skill, then when conflict arises you will fight, even if the situation could have been solved by other means.
9. If you fail to recognize the attack developing and are startled by it, you will not have access to your skills. If you allow your awareness to lapse and fade, you will become a victim of your own overconfidence.
10. Dont spend all your training time in the dojo. Miyamoto Musashi, one of humanitys greatest warrior-philosophers, stated in his Book of Five Rings: ... If you learn indoor techniques, you will think narrowly and forget the true way. Thus you will have difficulty in actual encounters.
11. Martial sports are about technical skill, steadfastness, endurance, doggedness, durability and resilience. They have nothing to do with personal combat because they do not take place outdoors, in the dirt, in the rain, in the snow, on the concrete or in ambush simulationswhat Tony Blauer refers to as ballistic micro-fights.
12. Most people have never fallen on anything harder than a mat. They have never kicked with their shoes on or punched a real person. They have probably not tried to battle from inside a vehicle, from within a crowd of civilians or in the company of untrained loved ones. Dont fall victim to those pitfalls.
13. To prepare for an event, you must simulate it as closely as possible. Performance is in direct proportion to preparation. Moreover, the worst performance you have in training is the best you can hope for in combat.
14. To increase your chance of survival, you must engage in overload practice. Your training simulations must be more difficult than the potential assault.
15. Merely because something is old does not mean it is valuable today. Ancient training methods are an excellent way of learning how people fought and trained in ancient times. Back then, people trained in unarmed fighting because oppressive rulers restricted weapons possession.
16. Some ancient fighting methods are no longer effective because the 21st century has brought a new kind of threat. The assailant which confronts you is a new breed of felon more terrorist than criminal, (Crime in America: Its Going to Get Worse. Readers Digest, August 1995).
17. Because of the weapons and methods used by modern criminals, you can no longer permit yourself the luxury of training only with your empty hands. You must adopt an integrated system that spans the spectrum of defensive preparation, from non-verbal communication to interpersonal skill to less-thanlethal measures to lethal force.
18. You must always hold true to your goal: to survive unconditionally, without question, at any cost. That does not include fighting; it does include appropriate application of fighting skill at the decisive moment.
19. Its time to fight when the situation is no longer acceptable to you. Rarely do you have to fight. Rarely do you encounter a situation that is truly unacceptable. The obstacle is not that you fail to choose to fight, for it is not a choice but a fact that when something is unacceptable to you, you will act upon it in some form.
20. The danger is that when you are surprised or not properly prepared with a flexible and comprehensive combatives doctrine, you are not given the opportunity to ์enter the fight.๎ If so, your actions may be inappropriate or insufficient. Anyone can successfully negotiate personal combatas long as he is given the ability to act appropriately.
21. What gives you the ability to survive is training within a doctrine that permits you to identify and assess a threat prior to the fight, one that derails psychological and physiological factors that inhibit your entrance into the fight, one that affords you access to your fighting skill should physical violence break out, and one that provides post-combat knowledge to address legal, medical and social concerns.
22. Your capacity for calmly recognizing an assailants probing process will determine your ability to survive. There are certain characteristics that are common to all attacks and certain brands of behavior common to particular types of belligerents. The attackers probing phase is one of these characteristics.
23. If the probe returns a positive response, the assailant will select you as his target. If you do not possess the calm repose and wherewithal to recognize that combat begins long before the fight, you will never have access to your fighting skill. If you fail to recognize the development of the attack, you may be able to muster the ability to do something about fighting, but effective retaliation will be beyond the scope of your faculties.
24. Self-protection is not about fighting; it is about awareness and commitment. Awareness of your options and the composition of confrontation increases your survivability. Non-verbal training, eye and facial calibration, body carriage, postural and spatial constitution, gesticulation and verbal skill should be critical parts of your training.
25. Your preparation must encompass the full spectrum of conflict resolution. That can mean feigning submission and acquiescing to the demands of the assailant. Give up your wallet or purse; its contents do not equal your life or the life of a loved one.
26. Withdraw when you can. It may be your most successful tactic. Remember that withdrawal will save your life. In a fight, you will be lucky to leave unscathed, so if you can avoid the fight, do so at all costs. Combat avoided is a fight won.
27. During a physical confrontation that has obvious legal implications, the fight is over when the assailant is no longer a threat, even though the turmoil continues until the situation is resolved legally, socially, physically and emotionally.
28. You should endeavor to end physical confrontation as quickly as possible. Keep your response simple and expedient. You do not have the luxury of being complex, especially in multiple-assailant engagements. Most of the time, you can end the problem by simply unbalancing your adversary and withdrawing tactically.
29. The law never supercedes your right to self-preservation. The legal system was created to perpetuate your survival, not inhibit or endanger it.
30. Fighting is something you do with someone; combat is something you do to someone. Accept no less than unconditional survival. You must if you want to live. ...
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