THREAT PERCEPTION

These Physical and Behavioral Cues Can Help You Spot the Signs of Impending Danger

- Cody Martin

We don’t need to extol the value of everyday preparedness — if you’re reading this magazine, you already know its importance. But being prepared without looking prepared is a much more daunting task, and requires a conscious decision to blend into the environment. It offers the ability to go about your daily routine without being noticed or drawing attention. Some call this the gray man principle, others call it simply maintaining normality. The element of surprise can be paramount when it comes to addressing threats or other dangerous situations you may encounter. Alternatively, blending in can also help reduce the likelihood of being a target in the first place.

One of the elements often discussed when referencing this philosophy is situational awareness — the ability to pay attention to your environment in a way that helps you decipher and analyze the things occurring around you. This is important in order to increase your chances of being able to appropriately respond to incidents. In a lot of ways, it’s the foundation for preparedness in general.

An important component of situational awareness is threat perception. Threat perception is our ability to evaluate the nature and degree of risk an individual, a group of people, or the environment itself may pose. When referencing people, our job is to evaluate whether a person is a perceived threat, real threat, or no threat at all. Correctly analyzing threats gives us the ability to react and present countermeasures as quickly as possible.