AAR William Aprill’s Unthinkable
January 14th 2017
LHGK
From LHGK course announcement, for whatever reason I couldn’t find the course description from William Aprill.
Unthinkable: Concepts and Techniques for the Gravest Extreme
Who: Dr. William Aprill - Aprill Risk Consulting.
What: Unthinkable - Concepts/Techniques for the Gravest Extreme.
When: January 14, 2017.
Where: LHGK - Council Bluffs, IA.
Why: Development of an adaptive defensive mindset and effective techniques for facing a drawn handgun when unarmed.
How:
• Through intensive, interactive lecture and hands on, practical skills development.
• Many instructors present material on surviving physical attack and some others address the aftermath of that defensive violence. However the preparation for being attacked, what Craig Douglas of ShivWorks has referred to as the pre-kinetic phase, is given limited, if any, attention by the vast majority of trainers and even fewer students.
• This presentation will review common mental and philosophical errors made by practitioners as they plan for what they hope will never happen: a determined attack by a violent criminal intent on killing you and those you love.
• Attendees will be exposed to a practical method for undertaking the pre-need decision-making necessary to a sound self-defense and survival mindset, providing increased awareness and a clear path to maximize their capacity for self-protection.
Required Items:
• Note Taking Material.
Prerequisites:
• None.
Objectives
I took this course to enhance my war gaming ability. Like many, I think through practical situations where I might need extreme actions to resolve. By better understanding the potential opponent, I can better plan my actions around the hypothetical situation.
NOTE : This AAR will be lacking on material covered simply because it is a lecture based course, I will not be sharing that info for free. This is also just a sample of the material covered, in 8 hours I took 16 pages of notes. Go take the course for yourself.
Day 1 AM
We started the day with introductions and a general over view of William’s back ground, as well as some general terminology for the course. The most important term for the day was Violent Criminal Actor(s) or VCAs. Simply put VCA’s are people who do you harm because they see you as prey and want something you have. More or less, their job is to hurt you and take your stuff for a living. Another important distinction was between the terms “target” and “victim”. While the terms may be used interchangeably, they are in fact very different. The term target applies to a much wider pool of people, many of who are unaware that they are targeted, simply because they are not selected. Victims are targets who became selected. Much of the first two hours was spent discussing target indicators that help criminals choose victims.
Target selection is rarely as random or seemingly mindless as some would portray it, many criminals have broken down the target selection process to a simple Go or No Go test by quickly and simply analyzing multiple factors about the target.
Much of target selection by the VCA, is intuition based, just like the fuzzy feeling on your neck, they have feelings too, they are just tuning those senses differently. It came up during this discussion that there is an entire class of victims that have been selected for crime repeatedly, which indicates that the many of the traits that cause a person to be selected are recognizable to a wide variety of people and remain consistent. One of the more prominent traits as identified by criminals was the gait of the target. This discussion went on to cover numerous other traits and ideas about how VCAs formulate a Go / No-go test for their action and if a target is a “go”.
At this point, we moved into a section talking about statistics of assault (technically battery). Due to lack of recording agency, use of force against and by armed citizens is largely un-tracked in a cohesive manner. However, LEOKA provides excellent data about crimes against LEOs. The main talking point that came from this discussion was that the same VCA who wants to fight you may not be the most likely to kill you. These criminals are a different kind more than they are a more serious criminal.
Next, we talked through a response to the VCA, this conversation centered around defensive violence as a counter ambush. However, before violence becomes the answer, deselection should always be the goal. While we can not prevent being targeted, we can avoid being selected. A large component of being de selected was the Situational Awareness of the target. Many victims relate, “They came out of nowhere”, which is more of combination of the VCA shortening the target selection process and the speed of action. William brought up that he often hears the “OODA” loop brought up in response to this topic. His point of it not being a loop, but a cross word puzzle made a lot of sense. You and the VCA are racing to the “A”. Some other main takeaways from this portion were that we should be actively managing the information we provide freely to others. We should be aware that a VCA may be running his selection process on us at any moment, and we should be careful what we give away. Finally, the phrase, “You can’t avoid what we don’t know is happening and we don’t have to deescalate what we aren’t put into.” Really sums up the impact of being aware what is happening around you.
Just before lunch we cleared the room and removed all dangerous items, broke out the blue guns and started discussing gun disarms. The basic principle is broken down into “Should I do this?” or “This has to happen”. William discussed techniques for a multitude of gun presentations as well as the small idiosyncrasies of each technique. The two main talking points of this portion were that, “The fight doesn’t end when you get the gun”, and that muzzle awareness has never been more important than when you are fighting over a gun. I muzzled myself multiples times, even in half speed scenarios, and combined with all the little nuances and variables, you find it certainly isn’t something that you can get away with on the fly. To be good at it, or have even a remote chance of success, this would take constant drilling and FOF validation.
Day 1 PM
After lunch we continued the pistol disarms, working in new gun presentations and answering specific questions regarding various techniques. It became apparent to me that the students who had previous FOF or fighting experience had an obvious advantage. It is also important to note that this is only a primer on the topic. Personally it did seem slightly out of place compared to the lecture portion of the class, but was interesting none the less.
The lecture resumed with the 5Ws of Risk: Who, What, When, Where, Why. The topic of Who is broken down into a couple different categories based on what level of “good guy” you perceive yourself to be and the level you actually are. The “bad guy” side is also broken down based on the level of interaction you have with the person. The What is fairly simple, the (possible) confrontation; and the When is simply when it is most advantageous for the bad guy and least advantageous to you. There Where, like the target selection process, is based on efficiency, where can the VCA have the best chance of “success” with the lowest effort or risk? The Why will vary from VCA to VCA, some just enjoy violence, some want your stuff, some want you to pay for something you did, etc.
The next portion of the lecture was devoted to the limitations of the war gaming. Without context or reality checks it can become very easy to fall victim to our expectations of circumstance or the limits of what we have previously experienced. Events that are abnormal will delay our response simply because we have never thought about it before, and because we are seeing things unfold differently from how our mind told us they would. This concept is very important because it shapes how we train, the gear we buy, the actions we take, event planning, etc.
To close out the day, we walked through the actions we could take to change our ways or better prepare:
1. Understand the big picture
a. Defensive mindset to Counter assault
b. Moral certainty
2. Honest Self Assessment
a. Dispassionate
b. Individual Risk Profile
3. Grounding
a. Visualization
b. A “Mental Parking Spot”
4. Skills Training
a. Recent, Relevant, Realistic
b. Competition
c. Stress inducing
5. Mental Training
a. Commitment
b. Focus
c. Moral, religiously, philosophically right
6. Validation
a. Force on Force
b. Sparring
c. Peer Support
And the closing thought, “Recognize that your consent and understanding are not required for you to be placed in a crisis that risks the life of you or your loved ones.”
Observations
- This course provided a lot of info in a compressed time frame, William always had time to explain things or go into detail, but kept the pace moving
- Public perception of the bad guy is seldom right
- The notion that all criminals are totally stupid is fool hardy at best
- Intuition is more powerful than previously understood
- The trap of personal experience and expectation is hard to avoid
- Gun disarms are do-able, but require a high level of skill to accomplish consistently and even relatively safely
- “War-gaming” is even more important than I thought it to be and needs to be done more frequently
- Rob at LHGK is a great host, and provided an excellent class room for the class.
Any Questions please ask.
January 14th 2017
LHGK
From LHGK course announcement, for whatever reason I couldn’t find the course description from William Aprill.
Unthinkable: Concepts and Techniques for the Gravest Extreme
Who: Dr. William Aprill - Aprill Risk Consulting.
What: Unthinkable - Concepts/Techniques for the Gravest Extreme.
When: January 14, 2017.
Where: LHGK - Council Bluffs, IA.
Why: Development of an adaptive defensive mindset and effective techniques for facing a drawn handgun when unarmed.
How:
• Through intensive, interactive lecture and hands on, practical skills development.
• Many instructors present material on surviving physical attack and some others address the aftermath of that defensive violence. However the preparation for being attacked, what Craig Douglas of ShivWorks has referred to as the pre-kinetic phase, is given limited, if any, attention by the vast majority of trainers and even fewer students.
• This presentation will review common mental and philosophical errors made by practitioners as they plan for what they hope will never happen: a determined attack by a violent criminal intent on killing you and those you love.
• Attendees will be exposed to a practical method for undertaking the pre-need decision-making necessary to a sound self-defense and survival mindset, providing increased awareness and a clear path to maximize their capacity for self-protection.
Required Items:
• Note Taking Material.
Prerequisites:
• None.
Objectives
I took this course to enhance my war gaming ability. Like many, I think through practical situations where I might need extreme actions to resolve. By better understanding the potential opponent, I can better plan my actions around the hypothetical situation.
NOTE : This AAR will be lacking on material covered simply because it is a lecture based course, I will not be sharing that info for free. This is also just a sample of the material covered, in 8 hours I took 16 pages of notes. Go take the course for yourself.
Day 1 AM
We started the day with introductions and a general over view of William’s back ground, as well as some general terminology for the course. The most important term for the day was Violent Criminal Actor(s) or VCAs. Simply put VCA’s are people who do you harm because they see you as prey and want something you have. More or less, their job is to hurt you and take your stuff for a living. Another important distinction was between the terms “target” and “victim”. While the terms may be used interchangeably, they are in fact very different. The term target applies to a much wider pool of people, many of who are unaware that they are targeted, simply because they are not selected. Victims are targets who became selected. Much of the first two hours was spent discussing target indicators that help criminals choose victims.
Target selection is rarely as random or seemingly mindless as some would portray it, many criminals have broken down the target selection process to a simple Go or No Go test by quickly and simply analyzing multiple factors about the target.
Much of target selection by the VCA, is intuition based, just like the fuzzy feeling on your neck, they have feelings too, they are just tuning those senses differently. It came up during this discussion that there is an entire class of victims that have been selected for crime repeatedly, which indicates that the many of the traits that cause a person to be selected are recognizable to a wide variety of people and remain consistent. One of the more prominent traits as identified by criminals was the gait of the target. This discussion went on to cover numerous other traits and ideas about how VCAs formulate a Go / No-go test for their action and if a target is a “go”.
At this point, we moved into a section talking about statistics of assault (technically battery). Due to lack of recording agency, use of force against and by armed citizens is largely un-tracked in a cohesive manner. However, LEOKA provides excellent data about crimes against LEOs. The main talking point that came from this discussion was that the same VCA who wants to fight you may not be the most likely to kill you. These criminals are a different kind more than they are a more serious criminal.
Next, we talked through a response to the VCA, this conversation centered around defensive violence as a counter ambush. However, before violence becomes the answer, deselection should always be the goal. While we can not prevent being targeted, we can avoid being selected. A large component of being de selected was the Situational Awareness of the target. Many victims relate, “They came out of nowhere”, which is more of combination of the VCA shortening the target selection process and the speed of action. William brought up that he often hears the “OODA” loop brought up in response to this topic. His point of it not being a loop, but a cross word puzzle made a lot of sense. You and the VCA are racing to the “A”. Some other main takeaways from this portion were that we should be actively managing the information we provide freely to others. We should be aware that a VCA may be running his selection process on us at any moment, and we should be careful what we give away. Finally, the phrase, “You can’t avoid what we don’t know is happening and we don’t have to deescalate what we aren’t put into.” Really sums up the impact of being aware what is happening around you.
Just before lunch we cleared the room and removed all dangerous items, broke out the blue guns and started discussing gun disarms. The basic principle is broken down into “Should I do this?” or “This has to happen”. William discussed techniques for a multitude of gun presentations as well as the small idiosyncrasies of each technique. The two main talking points of this portion were that, “The fight doesn’t end when you get the gun”, and that muzzle awareness has never been more important than when you are fighting over a gun. I muzzled myself multiples times, even in half speed scenarios, and combined with all the little nuances and variables, you find it certainly isn’t something that you can get away with on the fly. To be good at it, or have even a remote chance of success, this would take constant drilling and FOF validation.
Day 1 PM
After lunch we continued the pistol disarms, working in new gun presentations and answering specific questions regarding various techniques. It became apparent to me that the students who had previous FOF or fighting experience had an obvious advantage. It is also important to note that this is only a primer on the topic. Personally it did seem slightly out of place compared to the lecture portion of the class, but was interesting none the less.
The lecture resumed with the 5Ws of Risk: Who, What, When, Where, Why. The topic of Who is broken down into a couple different categories based on what level of “good guy” you perceive yourself to be and the level you actually are. The “bad guy” side is also broken down based on the level of interaction you have with the person. The What is fairly simple, the (possible) confrontation; and the When is simply when it is most advantageous for the bad guy and least advantageous to you. There Where, like the target selection process, is based on efficiency, where can the VCA have the best chance of “success” with the lowest effort or risk? The Why will vary from VCA to VCA, some just enjoy violence, some want your stuff, some want you to pay for something you did, etc.
The next portion of the lecture was devoted to the limitations of the war gaming. Without context or reality checks it can become very easy to fall victim to our expectations of circumstance or the limits of what we have previously experienced. Events that are abnormal will delay our response simply because we have never thought about it before, and because we are seeing things unfold differently from how our mind told us they would. This concept is very important because it shapes how we train, the gear we buy, the actions we take, event planning, etc.
To close out the day, we walked through the actions we could take to change our ways or better prepare:
1. Understand the big picture
a. Defensive mindset to Counter assault
b. Moral certainty
2. Honest Self Assessment
a. Dispassionate
b. Individual Risk Profile
3. Grounding
a. Visualization
b. A “Mental Parking Spot”
4. Skills Training
a. Recent, Relevant, Realistic
b. Competition
c. Stress inducing
5. Mental Training
a. Commitment
b. Focus
c. Moral, religiously, philosophically right
6. Validation
a. Force on Force
b. Sparring
c. Peer Support
And the closing thought, “Recognize that your consent and understanding are not required for you to be placed in a crisis that risks the life of you or your loved ones.”
Observations
- This course provided a lot of info in a compressed time frame, William always had time to explain things or go into detail, but kept the pace moving
- Public perception of the bad guy is seldom right
- The notion that all criminals are totally stupid is fool hardy at best
- Intuition is more powerful than previously understood
- The trap of personal experience and expectation is hard to avoid
- Gun disarms are do-able, but require a high level of skill to accomplish consistently and even relatively safely
- “War-gaming” is even more important than I thought it to be and needs to be done more frequently
- Rob at LHGK is a great host, and provided an excellent class room for the class.
Any Questions please ask.