Planning Your Trip

So, you decided to go on vacation. Good for you! Everyone needs to get away from time to time and take a much-needed break from the doldrums of their everyday routine. Let’s face it, work can be a drag, and getting away on vacation is a great way to recharge your batteries and refocus on the things that are most important: family, friends, fun. It sounds good, right? Of course it does, but when you’re planning a successful getaway, you have to think about more than just the fun stuff; you also have to consider your personal safety and the safety of those you’re traveling with. This is where situational awareness comes into play.

I define situational awareness as the ability to identify and process environmental cues for the purpose of accurately predicting the actions of others. It’s not an overly complicated process, and you don’t have to be a soldier, police officer, or federal air marshal to master it. In fact, you really only need four things:

  1. An understanding of various environments
  2. The ability to differentiate between normal and abnormal behaviors within those environments
  3. An understanding of how variations in those behaviors could possibly impact your safety
  4. The ability to develop plans for avoidance or escape based on what you see

Sounds easy, right? Well, it is, but it takes focus and practice to make it a natural part of your daily routine. If you think about it, you’re more than likely doing these things already; for example, you’re driving down the street and coming to a four-way intersection. Another car is approaching from your left. It looks as if the driver is distracted by someone in the backseat and isn’t slowing down. Based on what you observe in that situation, you can pretty accurately predict the outcome. The driver will likely miss the stop sign and blow through the intersection, so you remain in place and patiently wait for them to pass. That’s it. You just used situational awareness as a means of ensuring your own safety.

In most cases, it’s that simple, but things tend to get a little more complicated when it comes to predatory violence, especially when you find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings. We’re going to get into those differences later on, but for now, let’s discuss why the early detection of potential security risks is so important.

Practice Situational Awareness

Practicing situational awareness dramatically increases your chances of spotting dangerous situations before they happen and sharpens your ability to predict the actions of others. Ideally, this process of identifying and analyzing risks takes place well before you decide to leave the house. When you’re preparing for a trip away, the first step in identifying potential problems begins in the planning phase. Proper planning requires more than just picking a vacation spot and packing a bag. It requires some in-depth research and preparation if you want to make sure your getaway is both safe and enjoyable. We can break this planning stage down into three primary segments: 

1. Threat assessment: This is the process of using personal and online resources to evaluate the threat level within a particular environment.

2. Itinerary development: This is nothing more than preplanning your activities to maximize your time away from home. I won’t spend much time on this portion because not everyone plans every little detail in advance. Plus, itineraries can vary wildly depending on your individual tastes and personality. What’s important to remember is not to be completely rigid in your planning. Always be prepared to “flex” your plans should the need arise. This need to adjust can stem from unforeseen issues back at home or security concerns at your destination. Travel guides and internet searches won’t help you uncover every possible danger in advance, so it’s always best to have backup plans should one of your activities fall through. This is known as contingency planning.

3. Contingency planning: As the old saying goes, “If something can go wrong, it will.” No one likes to think that way when planning their vacation, but it’s crucial to develop standardized emergency responses well in advance of your travel. Things like medical emergencies, separation from family members, lost communications, and the risks of getting stranded all have to be considered.

J. R. R. Tolkien once wrote, “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near one.” Granted, this quote may be from a story about an old wizard and a questing Hobbit, but it makes a great point. When it comes to travel, you have to identify and consider your “dragons,” or those things that could pose a significant danger to you over the course of your journey. That’s why this planning stage is so important. Once you’ve picked your destination, it’s time to begin your targeted research on that location and identify any security risks that you may need to consider. This process of collecting information on a particular area is referred to as a threat assessment.

Key Points:

  • Situational awareness as the ability to identify and process envi- ronmental cues for the purpose of accurately predicting the actions of others.
  • For situational awareness to be most effective you need four things:
    • An understanding of your environment
    • The ability to differentiate between normal and abnormal behaviors within that environment
    • An understanding of how variations in those behaviors could possibly impact your safety
    • The ability to develop plans for avoidance or escape based on what you see within your environment
  • Practicing situational awareness dramatically increases your chances of spotting dangerous situations before they happen and sharpens your ability to predict the actions of others.
  • We can break the planning stage of your trip down into three primary segments:
  1. Threat assessment
  2. Itinerary development
  3. Contingency planning

The above is an excerpt from Spotting Danger for Travelers: Build Situational Awareness to Keep Safe While Traveling by Gary Quesenberry, Federal Air Marshal (Ret.), Publication Date April 1, 2023, YMAA Publication Center, ISBN: 9781594399305.