486 - (FREE TO READ) Mailbox: Tales from the inverted bell curve
Useless sucker punches / wrist locks / W. Hock Hochheim / Knife crime & young men / chokeholds / Judo / Krav Maga / Drunken street brawls...
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I’ve been remiss in posting a Mailbox lately, thanks to those who have written in, here’s a recent selection of emails from readers (My comments are in brackets) .
If you’d like to ask something or get in touch in general, please feel free to email me at info@forcenecessary.co.uk
Cheers,
Jeth
From Mr C. Arnivore:
Sucker punch:
(And everything has a counter and a counter to that counter right? Sometimes though, it comes unexpectedly from someone else…
Moral: don’t go around hitting people, especially if you’re crap at it)
S:
”Considering my overall demographic profile and lifestyle, how likely is it someone will try to pull a knife on me and what are circumstances to avoid so this doesn’t happen? Is it likely for a random, law-abiding, male aged 20-24 to get stabbed on the bus or is this something we only think is common because of the media?”
(As a young male using public transport to travel to college between two towns, you are in the single highest risk group for this happening to you. You are the right age and gender and the raised exposure to the public from not having the somewhat safer transport of your own in the form of a private locking metal box on wheels raises it again.
People discuss road rage but I find that many drivers don’t understand the difference in walking and using buses and trains in terms of risk profile and seeing stuff that they miss while driving.
But which towns, some are worse than others and why could it happen to you though?
You can’t lock yourself up at home, although I’ve known some guys who did that through fear of being attacked and the resulting destruction of their mental health. Learning ways of handling yourself around public places and being realistic about risks is a good start.
Being a good person and conducting yourself as such is another.
Unlike many, we can be lucky and privileged enough to live in low-crime areas but bad things can still randomly happen though.
The press both creates a fear environment to keep your mid-brain occupied and also enables and spreads problems via the copycat degenerates out there.
Use your own eyes - if you have never seen this happen or haven’t heard of it happening to someone you know of in your area, then chances are it will be a rarer occurrence than the media would have you believe.
Unless you have a specific reason, try not to allow fear in from media, and spend the time you save making the world a bit better any way you can.
However, the old adage of “Expect the best, but prepare for the worst” still stands.)
Some other questions that came in:
“Roughly how long after a pass and pin, would I have to get my attacker into a wrist lock? Does the amount of time I have increase if I punch them?”
(Hock Hochheim’s “diminished fighter theory” applies to situations where even the most highly trained (insert martial franchise/ combat sports star here) individual becomes vulnerable to techniques that the hordes of keyboard warriors out there would write off as “not working on da street” when they’ve had a chair smashed over their head.
How long is a piece of string? It’s not just for passes or pins, locks and cranks are opportunistic in nature.
You do it when you need to…when you can, if you can,
…or maybe just hit them with the chair again?)
”In some parts of America, police policy prohibit chokeholds and apparently (though you probably know whether this true or not) they are banned from being used by British private security guards e.g. in supermarkets or at least aren’t taught in the SIA sponsored courses, can I still use them if necessary to protect myself?”
(Yes, but this action must be justified and reasonable to the circumstances that you found yourself in - you also need to know and train this material because others may try to do it to you. Treat such actions as attempted lethal force against you because whether they intended or not, that’s what it may be if things go wrong - I never see this discussed in the marketing)
”Does judo have better wrist locks than Krav Maga, can a civilian use the same techniques as a police officer or member HM armed forces?”
(Most styles that have any form of grappling apart from pure striking styles have some form of wrist locking in their curriculum somewhere.
There’s nothing special about styles or professions in terms of the survival fighting focus, there is only YOU and how well you train and practice for the appropriate context.
If someone wants to assault me, I don’t care what they’ve done or trained in, I only care about what I’m going to do about it.
Having a broad range of understanding is really important, how things work and equally important, when they work and when they might not.
In the mercantile realm, if one is serious about learning skills for self-protection, then one must be smart and see through the commercial propaganda and seek solid information that fits us as individuals rather than what some franchise tells us or indeed, sells us.)
(And finally…)
B:
Hi Jeth,
Drunken street brawls etc. in one vid the lad is outnumbered about 8-1 but still comes out intact with credit.
https://davodevigne.wixsite.com/davo-tube
(I know, it’s not self defence but rather fighting - the pastime of the idiot but I particularly enjoyed video #3 - completely ineffectual fighting on a raindow flag while the immortal screech of “Leave ‘im alone!!!” accompanies the action.
It’s amusing to see the females try to suddenly assume the role of supervising adult authority figure when they’ve been the ones enjoying the company of these male infants for the evening and even selecting one of them as their potential mate…
A bonus was the Riverdancer in the grey hoody and trousers below his ass running (Does he know that trousers worn like this came from US jails where it meant “available for sex”?) in to do a quick “Lord of the Dance”, and then peg it after bouncing around a bit.
Ah, the modern world…expectations may exceed reality.
Did Darwin postulate that evolution was an inverted bell curve?)