A lot of it is training. Most people understand rationally that six people with chairs are going to quickly defeat a person with a knife. But unless the six people have previously agreed to grab chairs in such a situation, they are more likely to just cower and hide. It can take one person to quickly organize some sort of active defense. That is a very significant part of our training, just developing the mindset. Like sitting down in a plane and counting how many rows in each direction the emergency exit is.
Most people who chose a career where they are likely to face deadly situations worry how they will react when it really happens. A blustery attitude is no help. If anything, it conceals apprehension. Training situations try to get as close as possible, but don’t really answer your questions. And I am not just talking about combat. A big one for me was shipboard firefighting. I had the best training you could get, but I really did not know how I would react to a real fire deep inside a ship, wearing the SCBA and not really being able to see. I was probably more worried about how I would act than the danger from an actual fire.
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