Paris Pandemonium!

[warringtonmum88]

I know they say lone wolf attacks are hard to prepare for, hard to stop etc but this past week watching two situations unfold in Paris and the Sydney seige a few weeks ago has got me thinking.

How would you prepare for a lone wolf attack, if you could do such a thing of course?

The assailants obviously put a lot of prep into what they are determined to carry out so why should we be any different. One of my friends partners quite ignorantly in my opinion, suggested that he would now consider arming himself day-to-day...I had to remind him that while we are in the UK if he was caught with ANY offensive weapon he would be the one in trouble but he's not convinced.

I know a few of you are hand-to-hand combat trained and most of us know to keep an eye on exit strategies but what if, when push came to shove, there was no get out, you had no choice but to use some of your prep skills in formulating a plan.

I keep an eye on exits and where I can avoid the shopping centre as we have had a bombing here before in the 90's but I am intrigued to read any other ideas because I think one day we might just need them!

[dazthechippy]

this is a good topic to think about, one of the first things I do when I go to an environment I'm not familiar with is look for fire exits (hotels, planes, offices, everywhere).

I was at a hotel last week in a conference with 250 people in a room meant for 150, it was packed, even though there were exits and they were pointed out in the event of a fire it would of been a catastrophe. I opted for standing near the exit i thought best, no way was I going to be trampled on or have to trample to get out - I'd of been out first..

If I stay in a hotel i ask for a room as near to the ground floor as possible and walk all the routes to the exits as soon as i get there - people think I'm nuts !

[Waterbaby]

I pray I would be without my kids,and try to be the grey person.
I normally do scan for exits,but I'm not the biggest person and I really don't fancy my chances in a panic if people started trampling.

[Hamradioop]

The best thing to do is keep your eyes and ears open, look for cover and concealment if it does kick off, remember concealment offers no protection from bullets, so a plasterboard wall will hide you but offers no protection, If taking cover behind a car put the engine block between you and a shooter it will stop a bullet a door will not. Concrete flower plantes full of earth are good cover. just a few tips.

Major one do not wear headphones or walk along staring at you mobile phone. I amazed when I see skimpily clad female joggers with their headphones on, they are vulnerable to any predator. I see people crossing the road reading the text on their phone, dumb, dumb, dumb.

[PreparedKent]

I'm an ex close protection officer so always do a recce if I'm staying in a hotel or somewhere. My misses says I need help but I tell her she will thank me one day. When staying somewhere I always count the doors to nearest fire exit imagining I was on hands and knees (place to be if smoke/gunfire is coming). I'm trained in anti-ambush driving drills if I were attacked in my car.

I always, as a rule keep my car doors locked when driving and keep the window less than 2 inches open if I'm doing less than 30MPH. I also make my misses do the same.

Being a country boy who rarely ventures into the city these days does not put me at a high risk of terrorism but you never know. I would imagine an attack would most likely come in the form of a bomb in the transport system/shopping centre/stadium so if you are not killed in the initial blast the best course of action would be to head for the fire exit and hope you were not trampled to death by the running sheeple.

The trick is pre planning and situational awareness, if you go somewhere look for the information/concierge and ask them for a map of the building. They are usually happy to oblige. Carrying weapons in the UK is a no no but a shovel is a necessity for winter driving (I recommend the cold steel special forces shovel, keep that under you seat) as is a Maglite (breaking down in the dark is a nightmare). A dry powder fire extinguisher will disorientate people long enough for you to make a quick getaway

[grenfell]

Perhaps the first prep is to try to identify potential targets. As the last post suggests out in the country should be fairly safe , towns and cities with larger populations and therefore potentially higher causalities less so. Buildings or areas with governmental and/or military connections are likely targets , infrastructure , trains and planes seem obvious targets too as does organisations that have courted controversy as we have seen in Paris .
The second prep is therefore to try as much as possible not to put oneself in proximity to identified targets , obvious if not always practical.
Other than that as others have said look at exits and escape routes. Carrying weapons is a non starter really unless someone knows of a legal weapon that can counter an automatic rifle such as the favoured AK .

[Holomon]

The three attacks in Paris were ambushes, plain and simple. There's nothing anyone could have done in any of those three situations, with the exception perhaps of opening fire with a weapon of their own the minute the threat presented itself (No concealed carry in France as far as I'm aware - so that's out).
At the newspaper office, they came through the front door and walked straight in with their guns out, the journalists were in their conference room (coincidentally perfectly timed for the weekly meeting) and so were fish in a barrel. The police woman was approached by a car and then shot - nothing she could have done.
The guy walked in the front door of the supermarket, so again unless you happened to be stood next to another exit instead of actually shopping there was no way out, and the people that fled to the basement did the best thing in the circumstances.

Generally, the easiest way to keep yourself out of trouble, scientifically speaking, is to keep your head out of your ass.
What it boils down to, is if you walk along glued to your phone or replaying last night's Eastenders in your head, you miss lots of subtle clues and you become an easy target. For example three lads that just crossed to your side of the road a hundred yards up ahead.

If you keep your senses working by being aware of your environment, you are more likely to avoid trouble, or even preempt something bad happening to someone else. It's not new behaviour - you do it (or should) every time you cross the road. That's the point when you snap out of your internal thoughts, look up, use your senses and focus on whether it's safe. The trick is to introduce that into the rest of your waking life, so that you're able to maintain situational awareness and not be blindsided.
Whether or not you then go on to learn krav maga, or kung fu, or ninjutsu to defend yourself is another choice - the main thing is trying to avoid trouble in the first place.

But - sometimes there's nothing you can do (short of becoming a recluse), as with the three scenarios in Paris - and that's the worst situation to find yourself in.

[junmist]

While reading these posts something came to mind which hopefully will not make the parents on here panic Schools are a prime target So when you go to parents evenings do you scope out the exits storage rooms and such, for those who have children who can understand do you talk about what to do if a major incident happens in their school.
How about bring this up at a TPA meeting and asking if the school has an emergency plan lets admit it schools have a problems just managing a few inches of snow never mind a major incident. I do apologize if this gives you all nightmares tonight

[Manclife]

Taken from the Huffington post but makes interesting reading if we are comparing the response in France to what a UK response would look like.

"The populations of France and of England and Wales are roughly the same; France however has 155,000 National Police (Police Nationale) and 105,000 Gendarmerie, all of whom are armed. In addition there are 18,000 generally unarmed municipal police which gives a grand total of 278,000.

Compare this to the police strength in England and Wales where there is a shrinking force of 128,000 officers with just over 6,000 of those armed. Even adding Police Scotland's 17,500 officers which include 275 who carry firearms, does little to balance the equation."

When you think there were 88,000 armed officers responded to the incident in Paris I don't know how on earth we would be able to cope if it happened in the UK. Add to that the fact they want to reduce police numbers to 80,000 in the UK and our ability to respond looks even bleaker. Unfortunately there is no appitite from the public and therefore government to routinely arm police so its unlikely to happen anytime soon. That might change however if we are attacked and there are lots of deaths, perhaps then the public might demand it but if I'm honest even then I don't think it will happen.

[Holomon]

Taken from the Huffington post but makes interesting reading if we are comparing the response in France to what a UK response would look like.

"The populations of France and of England and Wales are roughly the same; France however has 155,000 National Police (Police Nationale) and 105,000 Gendarmerie, all of whom are armed. In addition there are 18,000 generally unarmed municipal police which gives a grand total of 278,000.

Compare this to the police strength in England and Wales where there is a shrinking force of 128,000 officers with just over 6,000 of those armed. Even adding Police Scotland's 17,500 officers which include 275 who carry firearms, does little to balance the equation."

When you think there were 88,000 armed officers responded to the incident in Paris I don't know how on earth we would be able to cope if it happened in the UK. Add to that the fact they want to reduce police numbers to 80,000 in the UK and our ability to respond looks even bleaker. Unfortunately there is no appitite from the public and therefore government to routinely arm police so its unlikely to happen anytime soon. That might change however if we are attacked and there are lots of deaths, perhaps then the public might demand it but if I'm honest even then I don't think it will happen.

But you can't compare apples with bananas. France has extensive land borders over which you could smuggle pretty much anything you want. I've skied into France and back and not one armed Gendarme jumped out from behind a tree.
Plus, France has one of the highest figures of firearms per capita in the world (they're number 11) so have something like 100 times the legal amount of firearms, and theirs aren't rigorously policed like over here with interviews and the like. By which I mean ours are mostly farmers with shotguns (620,000 licences) or semi automatic weapons you have to show proof of use to obtain (120,000 licences). France has over 20M legal firearms alone, let alone all the hardcore weaponry that's found it's way over the border.