Don't Die: 3 Lessons From the Don't Die Retreat

Mark your calendar for the next Don't Die event.

Post Summary

• We recently held the first Two Percent Don’t Die retreat.

• Our next Don’t Die retreat is scheduled for November 2 and 3 in Las Vegas. Join here.

• Today, we’re covering three brief lessons from the event that could save your life.

Housekeeping

• Registry for the Don’t Die event is open.

• The event will take place in Las Vegas on November 2 and 3.

• The event is limited to 25 spots.

Audio/Podcast version of this post

The post

We held the first Two Percent Don’t Die retreat in April.

We had a fantastic group of people who descended on Las Vegas to learn and practice the fine art of not dying—from safety and self-reliance at home and abroad to optimizing physical performance and mindset.

Here’s what it was like:

The point of the Don’t Die event is to help you survive and thrive no matter what life throws at you.

My partner in the event is Mike Moreno. Mike was a CIA Officer in the Middle East at the height of the war and later worked as an instructor at the FBI Academy.

Our goal is to expand your comfort zone by pulling from our 40 years of experience in kinetic environments and studying and practicing the foundations of self-reliance, health and wellness, and psychological resilience.

The skills you learn will boost your confidence and readiness for any scenario—whether traveling abroad or in your hometown, heading off on a wilderness trip, or just trying to navigate through a stressful crisis at work.

We also cover the tenets of staying fit, healthy, and mentally tough for the long haul.

The type of fitness you need in the wilderness or a chaotic scenario is the same that’ll help you age well and decrease your risk of disease the most (and it’s not the same type of fitness you get from most fitness programming).

A CIA Officer and investigative journalist are ideal people to learn these skills from. Soldiers are heavily armed and coated in body armor. They’re embedded with a group of other soldiers who are also heavily armed and covered in body armor. They have safety in numbers and weapons.

But what Moreno and I do is much different. We work alone and are mostly defenseless—our skillset is much more applicable to what the average person encounters in their travels and daily life.

Today we’re covering a few lessons from that event—tactics that anyone can use to stay safe at home and abroad. You’ll learn:

• How to build an plan to avoid danger, whether traveling or at home.

• How to move from point A to B (escape, driving/car skills, walking cities).

• How to avoid being targeted at a hotel and make your hotel room safer.

As Mike likes to say, “You’re never going to have to use these skills—until you do. And then your life will depend on them.”

Let’s roll …

Know how to escape

In short

Do “map recon” so you can get anywhere without using Google Maps. Do this at home and before you travel.

The details

Let’s start with travel. When people get to a new city, they usually figure out where they are and where they need to go. But the problem is that they do this in the moment.

• They exit the hotel, which is point A.

• They pull out their phone and search for the place they need to go, which is point B.

• Then they mindlessly follow the blue line on the Google Maps app to get from point A to point B (usually with their head down staring at the screen).

The problem: You’re screwed if something goes wrong and you have to re-route or escape. There’s no way you’ll be able to fire on an app, type, reroute, and follow a blue line when the pressure is on. You’ll end up running or driving somewhere that may be even more dangerous.

Surviving requires a bit of homework. If something goes wrong—and this can happen anywhere—you need to know beforehand where point A is, how to get to point B, and the safest points along the way to point B.

Enter “map recon.”

• Print off a copy of a map of city where you’re going.

• Mark where you’re staying and the places you’ll be going. Know the routes you’re taking to get to those places. Have alternate routes in mind in case your go-to route is unsafe.

• Mark “safe points” along the routes and know how to get to those safe points should something go wrong as you move. Be prepared to cover a lot of ground to get to the safe points (this is why we also covering physical fitness in the event).

For example, when I was in Baghdad reporting Scarcity Brain, I memorized the city’s layout beforehand.

If I was at my hotel, I knew different routes to get to the US Embassy or a police station.

I knew where I planned to go from my hotel and the routes I could take to find safety should something have gone wrong on the road.

Remember: Consider all of this before something bad happens. Plans made during a crisis are usually not optimal.

This idea is also critical at home.

• Know the most efficient route to a trauma care center. Have backup routes.

• Know various quick routes out of your city.

• Establish meetup locations with your family.

• Know the best way to exit the local businesses you frequent most often. For example, if you go to Costco once a week, the fastest way to get out of the building and parking lot is worth knowing.

The point isn’t to be paranoid. Take five minutes to learn this stuff and then live life as normal. That five minutes could save your life.

How to Move from Point A to B

In short

Roads are the most dangerous. Follow these six practices to stay safe while traveling through a city.

The details

Most problems happen as you move from point A to B.

A few tips:

• 1. Always, always lock your doors and keep your windows up.

  • Do this everywhere, no matter how safe you think the area is. Consider the spate of carjackings in various cities across the U.S. Like this spree in D.C., where a man was shot at 7:05 pm while parked in a nice area of town waiting to pick up his wife.

• 2. Keep your head on a swivel—practice what Moreno calls 360-degree situational awareness. You can avoid most danger by simply paying attention.

  • Scan your surroundings for possible danger—rooftops, roads, front, back, and side to side. Trust your gut here. If you see something that feels off, get away from it.

  • This helps you avoid driving into danger and accidents at home.

  • It also prevents you from walking into a sketchy situation on the street. Keep your head up, be attentive, and don’t spend your walk looking at your phone.

• 3. Avoid traps.

  • This one is for travel abroad: A common kidnapping tactic is to create a diversion in the road ahead and then swoop in from the sides. For example, a broken down car in the middle of the road ahead—but as you’re analyzing the car ahead, the “bad guys” are waiting in an alley right at your sides.

  • Again, 360-degree situational awareness.

• 4. At any stop, keep enough distance between the car in front of you so you can see their back tires.

  • This allows you to quickly spin your wheel and get out should something go wrong.

  • I always do this in everyday driving. It not only helps in the event of something like a carjacking, it also helps you avoid accidents.

  • You should also practice this on foot. Don’t walk close to strangers, especially if you’re walking at night. E.g., Cross to the other side of the street if you see someone you’re going to pass.

• 5. If you need to ram another car to escape, ram its back, or trunk.

  • That’s usually where the car is lightest and easiest to push through.

• 6. Do not hesitate to act or avoid a situation if something feels wrong.

  • Moreno calls this “getting off the x.” The x is danger. Trust your gut, don’t take too much time confirming the x. Get out.

  • Being willing to be a little bit awkward and leave can save your life.

How to make your hotel safe

In short

Choose the right room and ensure others can’t get in.

The details

The common approach: You get to a hotel, take whatever room they give you, and mindlessly walk up to your room and enter it.

A better method: Actively ask for the safest room and ensure no one can get in.

• Select a room on the 3^rd, 4^th, or 5^th floor.

  • Anything lower than that makes you an immediate target if something goes wrong, like an attack. Anything higher makes it harder for you to escape.

  • Know where the stairwells are. Take them if something goes wrong. The elevator is a choke point.

    • It’s also worthwhile to take the stairs for obvious Two Percent reasons.

  • If your hotel is in a big city and you have to stay on a high floor, know the location of every stairwell you can access (e.g., If a fire breaks out on a floor below you, one stairwell might be safer than another).

• When you get to the entry door of your room, scan your surroundings before you enter the room. Don’t enter if there’s anyone near you. “Bad guys” will often surprise you at this moment and barge into your room. (This has happened often in the US lately).

• When you enter the room, lock and latch your door immediately.

  • Then use a redundancy so the door can’t open. For example, place a door stop behind the door. You can buy a doorstop on Amazon.

    • Many criminals have gained access to key cards to rooms, so having this redundancy is critical (especially for women).

    • If the floor doesn’t allow for a doorstop to work, move a piece of furniture to barricade the door (I did this in Baghdad).

  • If your room is joined to another room with an access door, confirm that the access door is locked and consider blocking it. Many criminals are using a scam where they’re able to enter your room through the adjoining room.

A few other quick pointers:

• Don’t linger by the window if you hear an attack or commotion outside your hotel.

  • It’s human nature to want to see what’s going on, but that can be dangerous.

  • For example, Moreno told me about a case where people were drawn to windows after hearing shooting outside a hotel. Soon after, a car bomb exploded, shattering glass that killed those people.

  • They likely would have survived had they not been by the windows.

• Speaking of which, the bathtub is usually the safest place in an emergency.

  • If it’s safer to hunker down rather than escape (and this isn’t an easy call to make), you’re usually safest staying low in a bathtub with the bathroom door closed.

We’ll be diving deeper into the most important aspects of staying safe at home and abroad at the Don’t Die event. Of course, we’ll also cover Don’t Die fitness, mindset, nutrition, and much more. Learn more about the event here.

Have fun, don’t die, and we hope to see you in the desert in November.

-Michael

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