Article by The Sensei
Ultimate Stealth
By The Sensei
As the twenty-first century begins to grow, it’s pretty obvious that a great deal of self-protection training for civilians is available. Books on street-fighting litter the shelves of every bookshop; courses on every martial art under the sun are available everywhere; The internet is crammed with reams of information on everything from knife fighting to bomb making. Are you seeing a theme, here? Unfortunately, nearly all of this information relates to combat—direct confrontation.True self-defense is about more than this, and The Urban Warrior understands the truth more than anybody.
Just look to nature; the most effective animals are those creatures which have developed the power to make themselves invisible. Many insects have evolved over millions of years in a way that allows their bodily form to melt into their chosen environment; stick insects, moths and certain types of beetles are prime examples. Their “defense” against the outside world is not a type of confrontation. It's far, far more effective than that. And the same principle holds true for predators as it does for prey. Look at the camouflaged coat of the tiger, blending into the long grasses as she stalks her victim—the greatest attacks are the ones you never see coming!
Nature is sending humanity powerful lessons, here. Stealth and invisibility are important advantages for winning in any dangerous situation; and the more dangerous the crisis, the more useful and crucial these abilities become. More ancient cultures than ours understood this; thousands of years ago, before extensive farming became prevalent, our ancestors had to master the arts of hunting, just like animals. They knew that if you couldn’t become one with nature, you’d starve.
So why is it that when we think of combat and survival today, the concepts of stealth and invisibility are sorely lacking? It’s simply that, immersed in a loud, ugly time supported by technology, instant communication and electric light, we’ve lost touch with this basic message. If this is true for you, you need to learn to psychologically cut yourself off from modern culture, and develop your own, internal culture. You need to become “primitive” again. You need to master stealth.
Contemporary urban bodily stealth
To the average urbanite, the concept of “stealth” conjures up images of a Special Forces agent bedecked in face paint and bundled up in vegetation, crawling across a field on his belly. Or perhaps the romance of the ninja, a silent assassin clad in jet, darting across the rooftops like mystical lightning. But in fact there are many types of stealth to be considered, and all of them are important. Many of them are quite mundane; stealth can be about simply blending into the crowd on a day out shopping, or not standing out from the masses in a busy environment. These are basic abilities, but they are difficult for most people today who are taught from an early age that the goal of life is to be noticed by other people.
The Urban Warrior’s Bible lists four basic types of stealth:
1. Social Invisibility
2. Technological Camouflage
3. Bodily Stealth
4. Movement and Evasion
The book gives guidance on how to develop your powers in these areas, so I won’t go over training ideas and tips here. But I would like to point out the usefulness of these skills to the modern city-dweller. As I have said, so much self-protection information today revolves around direct combat—particularly unarmed combat—that you are probably well aware of the usefulness of combat skills. But what about stealth?
For most people, “self-defense” is based on the image of being attacked on the street. Perhaps in a night club or bar; maybe even by a mugger. That’s about as sophisticated as the average thinking gets—even for advanced martial artists. But your ideas need to be more all encompassing, if you are to reach your full potential and begin thinking like an Urban Warrior.
Social invisibility sounds very mundane, but it can protect you from more crime than any other skill in the world. Often, even very basic low-level attacks and acts of victimization only occur because the individual has made a target of themselves—perhaps completely unconsciously. Muggings are a good example. Self-defense techniques might teach you how to defend yourself if you are attacked, but what about the behaviors leading up to a mugging? What did you do to stop yourself from becoming a target in the first place? Did you look at the areas of town you were passing through? The majority of muggings occur in certain key areas of any town or city—did you find out where those areas were, or just bumble about with no clue? Avoiding lonely alleys and cash points will go a long way towards keeping you safe. And what about your own appearance? In our culture we try to display our wealth; designer clothes, sneakers, watches and jewelry. If you don’t flash these things around, you will be much, much less of a target for a mugging. And we all hear the horrible stories of those poor women who are raped or sexually assaulted in urban areas. But when you see modern girls, stumbling home alone, often drunk and through unlit areas, you have to question their sanity, frankly.
In truth, the majority of assaults don’t come from street thefts or sexual crimes, anyway. They are the result of alcohol-fueled brawls. Are you associating with heavy drinkers, frequenting bars late at night? If not, you won’t become a victim. It’s that simple. If you can master social invisibility, you will become virtually immune to the majority of crimes. Con men will tell you that half of the art of the con is finding the mark; locating the sucker from a crowd who will be vulnerable to the trick.
As more and more of our lives are lived through electronic tools, technological camouflage becomes an extension of the kind of social invisibility mentioned above. The mind-set is the same, but new techniques and tools are required to excel. If you have not been a victim of computer crime yourself, chances are you know somebody who has been. Hacking, phishing and unauthorized access to your computer can result in serious identity theft, fraud, and various vicious and advanced confidence tricks. Even the use of a credit or debit card to make payments makes you vulnerable to the identity theft. Simple use of everyday technology like mobile ‘phones render you trackable anywhere on the planet. CCTV cameras watch us from every angle. The government (which already tries to keep too much data on its free citizens) is currently investigating recording our DNA on a universal database—another level of Big Brother technology which will be vulnerable to abuse. Again, the key to protection here—invisibility! Learn how not to become a target in the first place.
In more extreme cases of emergency, bodily stealth may be required. When under attack or in a scenario involving live combat, you will need to learn to move silently and invisibly. Examples may include terrorist attack, kidnap, rioting, martial law, open urban warfare (anarchy, civil war, global warfare, etc). This art form requires genuine skill in several areas. Sources can be found in The Urban Warrior’s Bible.
Movement and evasion skills are inevitably one of the major keys to survival in a significant crisis. The ultimate form of invisibility is not to be there! What if you need to get out of an area very quickly? In cases of natural disaster, if you are being stalked, or in cases of other severe danger? What do you do? How good are combat skills when you are faced with real, high-level crises? The key to coping with these extreme scenarios is the ability to evade them. The Urban Warrior develops three sub-skills in this regard:
i. Orientation techniques. This obviously relates to basic cartography (map-reading) and navigation (knowing your environment). You need to know where you are at all times, and how to get to where you want to be. Advanced techniques include survival orientation—knowing how to navigate and know your location by natural signs (the sun, stars, etc).
ii. Learn how to use vehicles. Vehicles are everywhere in the city. Even if you don’t pass your test, if you learn how to hot-wire and drive a car, you will never be a sitting duck. Advanced techniques include offensive and defensive driving skills.
iii. Learn how to get anywhere. This follows on from orientation. For The Urban Warrior, movement is not just about conventional travel. Think outside the box! It’s also about unlocking those parts of the city—for travel and retreat—which most individuals never use. Rooftops, abandoned buildings, utility tunnels, storm drains, etc. And it also means allowing no locked door to get the better of you, using basic lock-picking tools (which are relatively cheap and easy to use).
If you train yourself in these three sub-skills, you will go a long way to becoming a master of movement and evasion—and quickly. This last is also useful in other scenarios. Lock-picking, security bypass techniques and covert entrance skills—combined with bodily stealth—are extremely useful abilities to obtain. Take the 1992 Los Angeles Riots as a classic example. The widespread looting of the riots was initiated by political activists and criminal opportunists, but the acts of vandalism backfired on the LA community as shops and businesses quickly closed and locked up. By the second day of the riots, storeowners had formed armed vigilante groups. On the third day, a power cut hit LA, causing food stored in fridges and freezers to quickly putrefy in the heat. As a result, many were left with no food, medicine, or supplies. During the day, desperate and hungry citizens brandishing handguns and knives approached malls and shops looking for essentials, only to be met and slaughtered by storeowners with automatic rifles. Many of the dead had thought they were prepared just because they carried weapons or were with a crew. In fact they were simply setting themselves up as targets. Using covert techniques they would have been able to move around the city unseen, and they would have been able to avoid conflict. Using a few simple stealth techniques and the correct lock-picking tools, any requisitioning operations could have been performed nocturnally, in absolute secrecy and relative safety.
If you take away a message from me today, make it this; look at your idea of what constitutes self-defense. You might be a fifth dan karate blackbelt, or a hulking kickboxer, and if you are that’s great. You might be superfit, or a deadshot with a pistol. You might be able to whip up a deadly boobytrap from household chemicals. These are all useful abilities. But does that mean you’ve developed all your self-defense potential?
The ultimate Urban Warrior is that shadowy being who was never a target in the first place.