Left of Bang

How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

By: Patrick Van Horne, Jason A. Riley

Narrated by: Danny Campbell

You walk into a restaurant and get an immediate sense that you should leave. You are about to step onto an elevator with a stranger, and something stops you. You interview a potential new employee who has the résumé to do the job, but something tells you not to offer the position. These scenarios all represent "left of bang", the moments before something bad happens. But how many times have you talked yourself out of leaving the restaurant, getting off the elevator, or getting over your silly "gut" feeling about someone? Is there a way not just to listen to your inner protector more but to actually increase your sensitivity to threats before they happen?

Legendary marine general James Mattis asked the same question and issued a directive to operationalize the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter program. A comprehensive and no-nonsense approach to heightening each and every one of our gifts of fear, Left of Bang is the result.

©2014 Patrick Van Horne and Jason A. Riley (P)2015 Tantor

Left me wanting the training course!!!

You can't really learn self-defense from a book. But this book outlines quite a few things you can look for to be more aware of your surroundings, and more prepared to blow the whistle, protect yourself, or take down a bad guy.

There is lots of science here, from military studies of Marines as well as enemies, to the social sciences and on. It incorporates principles from various types of profiling, interrogation, surveillance, and even plain old corporate posturing. This is knitted together with anecdotes from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US to show how paying attention to specific signals can pick the bad guys out of a crowd. This course should be given to ALL our military personnel, not just a small percentage of those being deployed to dangerous places.

The best part is that it provides vocabulary to take you from "something just felt wrong," "he was acting hinky," and "it didn't look right" to being able to specifically pinpoint the aspects of situations or behaviors of people that pose a threat. It is more than just a body language book, but it has that too.

This is a good place to start if you are interested in self-protection. I don't know if there is anywhere outsides the Marines you can get the actual course, but right after my shooting practice, I want this!

Useful skills for human observation.

This is really a book about human behavior. It's useful to just about everyone that's interested in maintaining an awareness of their surroundings and knowing something just isn't right. It definitely takes practice, but this lays a solid groundwork.

Outstanding

This book should be a must read for anyone who is seriously concerned about their personal safety. Many, many excellent tips and tools to use throughout life.

Great book

This book was definitely worth the read and was very easy to follow. i recommend it

Excellent and very eye opening

The content in this book will go a long way to helping you with situational awareness and reading how people react in different situations. Different aspects of human behavior can signify if something is wrong or if something is normal. This book will teach you what to look for to avoid a potential problem.