Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.
—Oscar Wilde
The prison system is a petri dish of asocial violence. It is a Darwinian proving ground for many of the ideas I have shared with you so far: stepping through your opponent, the natural disadvantage of assuming a victim’s mentality, the intent to injure first and fastest, a bias always toward action, disinterest in judgments about violence beyond whether it is effective. My career in self-protection training has taken me to some amazing places all over the world, but it has been my deep study of the tool of violence and my search for uncomfortable truths like these, that has taken me to a place few ever go: the American prison system.
In civilized society, the economy runs on money and credit. In the prison system, the baseline currency is the effective use of criminal violence. In society, the wealthiest people have the most money and the best credit. In prison, the wealthiest people are the most effective practitioners of violence. In society, you can survive being broke. You can get by. In a maximum-security prison, that notion is a non-starter. You cannot survive without access to and an accumulation of the basic currency—the effective use of violence. In prison, to paraphrase the rapper 50 Cent, you either get rich or die trying.
Through my work with correctional officers and law enforcement agencies, I have been able to study case reports and security camera footage from countless prison yard and cellblock confrontations. Many of the important lessons I have learned and will share in this book came from those videos, from the men and women featured in them who have not just survived in the prison system, but thrived. They are members of prison gangs, predators, violent criminals. By societal standards, they are the worst of us. By prison standards, they are the best. But in watching one video in particular, I learned something else; something that deepened and crystallized my understanding of the criminal element and their relationship to violence. I was sitting with a correctional officer and he was cueing up video of fights in the yard and the dining hall in the prison where he worked for me to review. They were standard fare, as these things go, and we discussed them with a similarly low level of enthusiasm. Then the officer perked up, as if he’d just remembered something, and told me about a video from earlier that morning that I had to watch.
The corrections officer cued up a short clip on his computer monitor that showed two men standing across from each other. They weren’t fighting—which is what I was expecting to see—but they were practicing stabbing techniques. It didn’t look like anything you’d see in an MMA cage or a boxing gym. One guy was slowly simulating a striking motion into the other. It looked like a stabbing motion, but it was slow and methodical, from strange angles that didn’t seem like they would be very effective.
This was not a typical approach to stabbing someone—it wasn’t like anything I learned in hand-to-hand combat training in the military, or that I’d seen in any of the hundreds of other prison videos I’ve watched. The prisoner mimicking an attack wasn’t targeting the spleen, liver, neck, or even the upper chest area where people are typically trained to strike with a knife. He was stabbing different areas of the torso, at different angles of entry.
The officer looked at me and asked, “Any idea what they’re doing?”
“It looks like some sort of training, but it’s strange. I’ve never seen these techniques before.”
“Yeah. It’s definitely different,” he said, goading me into the obvious next question.
“What is it?” I asked. “Is it some weird type of martial art?”
“No,” the officer replied. “Yesterday we had an incident in the yard that brought the CERT team out.* This was the first time they’d been activated since we got in a whole new body armor configuration. The prisoners knew it had come in, so they staged a fight to get their first look at it.”
“Did they really?” I asked. “That’s pretty calculating.”
“What you are looking at is two members of the Black Guerrilla Family simulating how and where to stab the most vulnerable gaps in our new armor.* They’re locking that info in right now. Each of these angles you’re seeing—they can get a shank in and penetrate us through our armor in those locations. That was the only reason they staged the incident yesterday—so the rest of them could get a detailed look at the armor and find the weaknesses.”
Neither of the two men training in the video were in great shape and, according to the corrections officer, they weren’t particularly brilliant, either. Despite media’s insistence on depicting violent criminals as huge, fearsome, ripped juggernauts, these were your run-of-the-mill prisoners—as were most of the men who orchestrated and participated in the staged fight. Yet they were savvy enough to have conducted what amounts to a reconnaissance mission, then debriefed, processed the learnings, and organized it into a loose training protocol, all in less than twenty-four hours.
It was eye-opening. There has never been a doubt in my mind that the prison system houses many of the most skilled practitioners of hand-to-hand combat, or combat with improvised weapons, but what I realized from this video was that the reason they are so skilled is because they have the best information, and they know how to use it, despite, by and large, having zero formal training in combat sports or martial arts.
When it comes to violence, one of the most unsettling things for people about learning from criminals is reckoning with the sober, workman-like nature of how they skillfully deploy brutality. It’s disconcerting for it to seem so… easy. We want to believe that there is something innate and exceptional in these men, something coded into their DNA, that makes them better at violence than everyone else. Sure, we’re all wired biologically and evolutionarily to use violence effectively, but we feel like there’s something in the marrow with these guys. They’re a different breed.
The reality is, what makes criminals better at violence is that they don’t romanticize it—they treat it like it’s business. In my time interviewing high-ranking prison gang members while also training business executives in self-protection, I’ve continually noticed parallels between the two worlds. They’re both very savvy and possess all the different kinds of intelligence that help them succeed. They both have clear goals and act with purpose. They both value precise, timely execution. And neither of them have time for opinions or sentiment—they only want facts.
In business, there are always a million threats to your success. Someone is always gunning for you and oftentimes it’s someone you weren’t expecting. The players who thrive are the ones who have the most, best information, who know all the most effective and efficient ways to leverage that information to their objectives, who have trained or studied or practiced methodically and gotten their ten thousand hours in, so to speak, and who have cultivated the right mindset to make the right move when a deal is about to fall apart or the company is hanging in the balance.
This is exactly what the two Black Guerilla Family members were doing in the video taken out in the yard. In the same way that you might take a class to learn how to do pivot tables in Microsoft Excel or attend a seminar from an expert, they were teaching themselves classes in an important part of their profession: the business of injuring and killing. They’d acquired the best, most up-to-date information the day before from the staged fight. They’d learn the best ways to use it by examining the CERT team’s new gear, and now they were training effective movements deliberately, over and over, to sear them into their brains so they could call on them like muscle memory at a moment’s notice.
Their surprisingly methodical training process compelled me to take a closer look at the rest of the videos I saw that day. And I’m so glad I did, because I found a similar mindset at work in every violent event I watched. In one of the most telling videos I watched, it wasn’t the combatants themselves who caught my eye; it was the audience. As a violent confrontation developed, everyone would crowd around and watch—a perfectly normal reaction, even outside of prison. But the similarities ended there. The facial expressions and body language of the spectators were unlike anything you’d find with people who were there for entertainment or to witness a power struggle within the social hierarchy. The men surrounding these prison yard fights looked like people who were there to learn. Their faces were steady and serious. They were watching almost clinically, studying the fight and taking mental notes: what worked and what didn’t, where did the outcome of the fight turn, which one of these guys was going to be the bigger threat in the future. They were doing research, cataloging information for their own use the next time they found (or put) themselves in a life-or-death scenario.
To survive in prison is not unlike winning in business, so it should be no surprise that the way gang members use violence as a currency is the same way entrepreneurs use capital. It’s a commodity that gives them leverage and power—one they can’t afford to take for granted or use carelessly. They must be judicious and exacting, with a laser focus on using it to their advantage and getting results, while also being prepared to make big bets and go all in.
One of the ways they use that capital most effectively is in securing all the help they can get, whether that means personnel or matériel. They don’t go it alone if they don’t have to. If you get into a car accident and the other driver sues you for all you’re worth, for instance, you’re not going to represent yourself. You’re going to retain the services of a lawyer who hopefully knows everything there is to know about car accidents and liability laws, who has a ton of trial experience, and a reputation for winning. An attorney with expertise in a different area might be cheaper or nicer or a friend of a friend, but choosing him is just going to increase the chance that you lose your case. Common sense, right? Yet, when it comes to violence, to fighting off another person who wants to take you for everything you’re worth—your life—we struggle with the notion that a violent criminal could be our best friend, or that we could learn something from the world they inhabit. Instead, we close our eyes, stick our fingers in our ears, and turn away—whether it’s news footage of a prison riot, dash cam footage of a convict attacking a police officer, or simply the mental imagery I am creating in these pages.
The problem with that mindset is that regular exposure (and practice) is the only way to learn a new skill or ingrain a new mindset. Whenever you’re learning something new—whether it’s tying your shoes or learning how to fight a criminal—there’s no substitute for actual experience, for seeing and hearing and doing it. Prisoners exist in a world where violence is a regular occurrence and the threat of violence is a constant. They have unmatched exposure to and experience in real, life-or-death violence. They not only learn from true experts—each other—they partake in real-world training. They live and breathe the stuff. That’s the crucial advantage they have over the rest of us, who are almost always insulated from real violence—and that’s why we have to learn from them. We can’t look away and pretend it doesn’t exist; we must strip away the emotion and the moral judgments and evaluate the violent events we encounter in our lives with the laser focus and clinical precision of inmates around a fight.
It is not the most comfortable idea to wrap your hands around, to be sure, but we often get life-saving information from ugly places. Doctors learn how to protect and save the human body by dissecting corpses. Workplace safety regulations are born of the study of workplace accidents. Seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones were designed by deconstructing thousands of fatal car wrecks. Like the open road and the factory floor, the prison system is also the best source of real world information about how to use and protect against violence. In prison, there are no weight classes. There’s no boxing ring. There are no rules of engagement. The premium is on creativity and unpredictability… and success. These are the same conditions you’ll face if you’re confronted with violence out in the real world (or competition in the business world). Let us not dismiss out of hand the good lessons that come from bad people when the stakes are so high.
In the last chapter I showed you an image of two figures locked in a violent struggle. I explained how criminals never see themselves as the guy being choked. I mentioned how some of the guys I talked to even suggested how they would do things better.
One of those guys was a prison gang enforcer in the same medium-security facility as the Black Guerilla Family members who were planning ways to circumvent the guards’ new body armor. I’ll call this man Damon. What Damon told me he would do different tactically isn’t important for our discussion here, but he told me some things about his mindset that were revealing.
Damon told me that even when he is at a disadvantage in a real fight, he only sees himself as the attacker, the standing man. Even when he’s losing the fight—in his own mind, he is never the one on the ground. Even when he is actually on the ground, fully horizontal, even if he’s been ambushed and his survival is teetering on the knife’s edge, his mind has a way of tilting the image on its side. Now the winner is lying on his back and the loser is above him. Regardless of the orientation, he always sees himself as the one doing the damage. Thus, he is just as comfortable and ready to inflict lethal injury upside-down, in the air, or pinned to the floor as he is standing up with his feet planted firmly in the ground. He has to feel that way, otherwise he’s dead. Or as he puts it:
If you think you’re the guy on the ground, you’ll end up being the guy in the ground.
Identifying with the downed man is to identify with the loser, the victim, the one getting done in. In the zero-sum nature of the prison experience, that means identifying with the dead. And in this world—a system of complicated power relationships and rigid hierarchies that sit on a foundation of asocial violence—anyone who thinks that way creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is how Damon has survived the many who have wanted him dead over the decades. This is why his demeanor is chillingly calm and relaxed. When we spoke, Damon never got excited or emotional. When he narrated what he would have done differently as the dominant man in the training image, or when he recounted any number of his own violent confrontations, they were not dramatic re-enactments so much as calculated reconstructions. He spoke matter-of-factly, without the veneer of machismo. He told me that the moment he stops thinking and acting clearly and directly, he’s as good as dead.
In a normal social context, we might call this mindset “evil,” or, if we’re being more clinical, “pathological.” But we’re not talking about normal situations here. We’re talking about life-or-death situations. In that context, Damon’s mindset is simply utilitarian. The trick for us sane and socialized folk is to keep such points of view confined to the realm of asocial violence and not let them become—as they have for Damon the prison gang enforcer—a way of life. Either way, we have at least one thing in common with Damon. Our perspective dictates our actions—no matter how much we wish otherwise.
If we can remember that, then when the time comes we can accomplish the same goal that Damon has for many years: to stay off the ground, so we don’t end up in the ground.
Whenever I watch a video that captures an instance of deadly violence, whether in prison or on the streets, I try to get a look at the attacker’s face. Not because I want to identify him—I’m not a criminal investigator. I’m looking for something more basic.
Our experience with media, sports, and gamified violence* tells us to expect to find some kind of “war face” on the aggressor. You know what I’m talking about: that intimidating, terrifying visage filled with fury, with eyes bugged out, brow furrowed, and teeth bared. It’s the kind of face that communicates a social message: “Do not mess with me.”
You will rarely if ever see that face on a real killer. A real killer does not want to communicate anything with anyone. He has no interest in frightening anyone, or telling you how angry he is. He doesn’t care whether you think he’s serious. He does not have a message to send. He just wants to injure his targets as badly as he can. He wants to shut off a human brain. It’s a focused, action-first mindset with clear, singular intent.
I often have to tell my students and clients to stop messing around with their facial expressions during training exercises. When I see people making the angry face as they engage a target, I know they’re really afraid. The angry face is their attempt to cover it up. In a simulation on the mats, they might be able to fool their training partner, but really they’re not fooling anyone but themselves. And they certainly aren’t fooling a truly violent predator. A real lion doesn’t roar when she goes in for the kill. Those loud, angry displays are for show—the epitome of social aggression.
Watching criminals commit violence has taught me that there’s only one reliable way to determine intent, and it’s not by looking at their face, but by examining how they interface with their targets. Those who are most effective at teaching and practicing self-protection can tap into this kind of intent when they need to, not by making a scary face, but just by getting the work done.
Recently, I organized a demonstration for some new students in San Diego. I asked Andy, an instructor, and Kevin, an advanced student, to roll through some free fighting to show all the students where their blows are supposed to land. Andy was absolutely savaging Kevin (as often happens when instructors are on stage and really push things for maximum benefit to the students), delivering a simulated beating that was both brilliant and ugly at the same time, doing things I’d never seen (or dreamed of) before. I felt the warmth of a predator’s appreciation.
And then I looked at Andy’s face.
In the midst of all that furious action—arms and legs going in every direction—Andy’s face was the singular dead spot. Flat. Slack. He looked, for want of a better term, bored. Only his eyes were alive, intent on each target in rapid succession.
While it warmed my heart to see such perfect execution, I could only imagine what such an apparent incongruity looked like to the uninitiated students surrounding them on the mat. Chilling, probably. It was the face of a killer—emotionless, done without talk, here now for the purpose of violence only as long as necessary.
To the initiated, Andy’s face says far more about violence and the intentional infliction of injury than the angry face ever could. I would never have learned what that face meant unless I spent time in prisons. And while prison is probably the best place to find information about real violence, there are a few other places where we can learn from our enemies—including combat.
As a private contractor instructing hand-to-hand combat, I’ve spent a lot of time with special forces units. Once, I was speaking with the senior officer of a SEAL team, who told me about a vehicle convoy training exercise he had just completed. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the primary offensive strategy employed by Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are ambushes built around IEDs planted on roadways that U.S. troops use to move men and matériel. As you might imagine, that makes convoy protection a big deal. The senior officer created an exercise that would put the troops into a simulated ambush situation where they would have to fight their way out while securing the convoy.
As an experiment, he ran the exercise in two different ways—first with conventional troops, then with highly trained special operations units. Here’s what he found: across the board, the special forces teams, including the SEALs, performed no better than the conventional troops when it came to dealing with ambushes. Neither special operations training, nor elite physical fitness, were adequate protection from an ambush for even our military’s most elite units—and, of course, our enemies understand this well.
The question we need to ask ourselves is, why? What is the tactical advantage built into an ambush that makes it so difficult to defend against? Simply put: by definition, an ambush is about seizing the initiative. That alone neutralizes the advantage of even the most elite adversaries. By seizing the initiative, you put yourself in Cause State and force your opponent to react, keeping them off balance, in Effect State. In Effect State, pretty much everyone—from ordinary grunts to elite SEALs—performs the same: poorly. Which should tell you that: 1) everyone is susceptible to violence in the Effect State, and 2) the best defense isn’t defense at all, it’s offense.
Training exercises like this SEAL ambush drill and the knife-attack demonstration I have my instructors conduct with our students are good tools for introducing the principles of real world violence, but nothing is quite as instructive as those principles born out in real life.
In 2003, a security guard at a Walmart in Ukiah, California, caught an eighteen-year-old female shoplifter trying to make her way out the door with a couple hundred dollars in merchandise. He apprehended her, detained her in the security office, and called the local police.
Ukiah Police Sergeant Marcus Young responded to the call. He took the report from the security guard, then escorted the perpetrator to his patrol car parked out front. As he was putting her into his police car, he noticed a small male walking toward him. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and both hands were in his pockets.
Sergeant Young was a seventeen-year veteran, former military trainer, and a highly skilled martial artist. He was a decorated police officer. He immediately recognized that something was strange about the hooded man, so he yelled out a command: “Stop. Show me your hands.” The man kept approaching. “Show me your hands!” As the man got within striking distance, he pulled a knife from his pocket. Sergeant Young knew the guy was too close to stop with a firearm at that point, so he swiftly executed a double wrist-turn knife disarm, grasping and twisting the man’s wrists to loosen his grip on the knife. That’s what he was trained to do, and it worked perfectly. He felt the man’s wrist snap as he twisted and turned with all his might.
There was only one problem. From the other pocket, the man pulled a five-round revolver, emptying all five rounds into Sergeant Young. Two bullets lodged in Sergeant Young’s body armor, but the others pierced his hand, arm, back, and cheek. Young dropped to the ground. As he lay on the ground bleeding profusely, the Walmart security guard leapt onto the hooded man’s back, knocking him away from Young. The hooded man casually let the empty firearm go, transferred the knife from his bad hand to his good hand, and stabbed the Walmart guard twice.
On what should have been a routine call, Sergeant Young brought a seventeen-year-old police cadet along. During the initial confrontation, the cadet was on the radio calling for backup. But now, with Young on the ground partially paralyzed by the gunshots, and his hooded attacker making a beeline for the shotgun and AR-15 racked inside the open patrol car, backup was useless. Young called the unarmed cadet over and told him to unholster Young’s weapon, which was on his right hip, and transfer it to his left hand—the only one that was still working. Just in time, Sergeant Young somehow found enough strength to fix his aim and pull the trigger, fatally shooting the attacker just as he was about to grab the AR-15 rifle.
Both Sergeant Young and the Walmart security guard survived their wounds. And when people read their story, they always talk about how Sergeant Young’s heroic actions saved their lives.*
The praise is well deserved, but there’s something more to be learned from this story. Both Young and the Walmart guard were trained to go after the enemy’s tools, but the enemy knew that the tools are not really what matters. What matters is the mindset that controls intent and the internal command center—the brain—that controls everything else. By focusing only on the tools the man was using, the knife and gun, the two men didn’t fully account for the hooded man’s true weapon—his brain. They didn’t attempt anything, like a strike to the neck or to the temple, that could create concussion and shut off his brain. As a result, they were unprepared to deal with his singular intent and mental drive, which resulted in a failure to lock down the threat. They were more concerned with disarming than incapacitating, and in this case, it cost them severely. They were so focused, in each case, on just one of the weapons the attacker had, which was how they ended up on the receiving end of the other. Their enemy wasn’t thinking that way. He was focused on a deadly mission, and that’s why he nearly won a two-on-one altercation.
How, then, do we take out the enemy’s command center? We’ll talk about this more in Chapter Seven, but for now, just keep this in mind: the goal is to produce enough trauma to trigger a spinal reflex reaction, which causes the body to focus on the injury. When the brain is focused on injury, it can’t perform any other actions. It’s impossible for a person in the throes of that kind of reaction to plan, to make decisions, or to think about anything other than the trauma.
We’ve all experienced it, at least in small doses. You feel it when you step on a sharp object, like a tack or a nail. Your foot automatically comes up, and your mind freezes. Or when you touch a hot surface, your hand automatically recoils—and again, you can’t think about anything else. Before there’s even a thought in your head, your body reacts, because the nervous system kicks in. The stimulus goes up the spinal cord and your brain takes urgent action to protect your body from further trauma—at the expense of temporarily shutting down conscious processing. You’re no longer acting. You’re reacting.
In the case of Sergeant Young and the Walmart guard, neither one of them delivered enough trauma to end the threat from the hooded man, to shut off his brain. And he made them pay for it.
A teacher hands you three books for a new class: Machiavelli’s The Prince, Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power, and Robert Comer’s Abnormal Psychology.
What do you think the class is about? Maybe something related to political science. Possibly a class about how revolutions start? Heck, it could be a survey course on the creation of American presidents.
Then the teacher gives you three more books. You don’t recognize any of the titles, but they’re all about human anatomy. Now what do you think this class is about?
In fact, this is a prison syllabus. An informal one, but no less real. In a recorded interview from inside prison, a notorious Mexican Mafia leader explained how he developed the education process for senior members of his organization. It began with a specific list of books—including those I just mentioned—and a set of subjects that were considered required reading for his lieutenants, on the inside and the outside. His list was as long as the one given to special forces officers at the JFK Center at Fort Bragg. The content was only slightly different. The major difference was the mafia leader’s focus on human anatomy. It was the dominant subject on the reading list, by far. It formed the gang’s blueprint for success in using the tool of violence.
The emphasis on anatomy is about expediency. The mafia leader knows that with guards, cameras, and rivals everywhere, a member he sanctions to conduct a hit often will only get one shot. If his lieutenant doesn’t kill his rival successfully, without being seen, he’ll likely be moved into protective custody or even transferred to another facility. That would be a huge blow to the organization, so he needs to ensure a swift and effective strike to a vital region of the target’s body. And the way to do that is to have a thorough understanding of how the body responds to trauma.
This focus is not unique to the Mexican Mafia, of course. Every major gang that I’ve studied—the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia, the Black Guerrilla Family—has an edict that members in the upper echelons must study anatomy. They’ve all composed reading lists like the one the Mexican Mafia leader relayed to his prison interrogator.
In the course of my research, I once examined a set of seemingly innocuous letters sent from a recently released prisoner to a gang member who was entering jail for the first time. It turns out the letters were coded. When you decode them, you find that the content is all about applying violence to human targets: how to make a shank, where to stab most efficiently, and how to inflict injury on another person in the event of a brawl. It was all precise, specific, and to the point.
It makes sense, right? These gangs are all in the same business—the business of violence. Violence is the source of their power. It’s the currency that gives them power over prisons, streets, and drug distribution. When doing harm to human bodies is a key part of your job description, a detailed understanding of the human body is a requirement for staying in business.
This focus on anatomy is a major clue about how to use the tool of violence. Criminals don’t look at bigger, faster, or stronger. They look at the human body—most important, the weaknesses that every human body has in common. I’ve seen a 5'7", 145-pound gangster take out a 6'6", 240-pound Aryan Brother by jumping into him, stabbing him in the eye, and then continuing to stab him in other areas until he died.
It wasn’t one of the giant Mongol biker regulars at Jose Murphy’s that took out my bouncer buddy Mike back in the ’80s; it was the small, squirrelly guy off to the side with the blade in his boot and years of prison time on his résumé. His survival on the inside undoubtedly depended on his ability to even the playing field against guys who held a physical advantage. Knowing exactly where to strike is the first step, because while circumstances will always be different, anatomy never is. Mike’s Achilles tendon and femoral artery were in the same place on his body as every other man in that bar.
If you look at somebody bigger, faster, and stronger and immediately think, “I’m at a disadvantage,” I have news for you: you are. But that’s only because you just put yourself there for no reason.
The truth is that anyone can do debilitating violence to anyone else. Your size, your speed, your strength, your gender—all the factors that untrained people think make the difference when it comes to violence—all matter far less than your mindset and your intent. And anyone can cultivate those. The tools to protect yourself against lethal violence are much more accessible than you think. You don’t have to earn a black belt or put on an extra fifty pounds of muscle. You do have to learn about the vulnerabilities that make all human bodies equal, and you do have to build the intent to take advantage of those vulnerabilities in time to save your life.
Never think “I’m at a disadvantage.” Instead, think, “How close am I to his throat? Can I get to his knee? Or his groin? Or his eye?” It was this precise mindset that saved Sara’s life in her dorm room bunk and neutralized the disadvantageous position she and her roommate had placed themselves in as targets. That’s how to flip things in your favor. When you understand anatomy, you strip the opponent’s power down to almost nothing.
I know the stories we’ve covered in this chapter have the potential to be quite jarring. Their main characters—prison inmates and violent criminals—are frightening people who are neither admirable nor inspirational. But for one, very specific objective—fighting for your life in violent situations that you cannot de-escalate or escape—they are good role models.
“How is that a good thing?!” you’re probably asking yourself.
Their lessons—attacking rather than retreating, directly incapacitating the human body by shutting off the brain, and understanding the human body’s inherent weak points—may be unpleasant or counterintuitive. But in situations of life-or-death violence, this is how your opponent is already thinking—and if that’s how they are thinking, that’s how you have to think, as well. If you can wrap your head around why it works, you can learn how to use it to your advantage. And you will quickly come to realize that it is the most effective means of protecting yourself.
The rules of asocial violence are very simple: don’t make yourself a target, focus your mind, know the human body, act first, intend to injure, don’t stop until he’s incapacitated or dead. It’s black and white versus social aggression’s infinite shades of gray. No one knows these rules better than the people who have defined them; the prisoners and predators who got very good at violence by learning from what you might call real-world, on-the-job training with true experts—each other.
There is no substitute for that kind of practice. But since our goal is for you to never have to practice this stuff in real life, I will settle for knowing that you have all the information bad guys have and that you are able to think how they think.
Just don’t make the mistake of judging them based on their crimes. Judge them based on whether they are still alive, because that’s the goal for all of us.