Retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson teaches us how to handle emergency threats, what it means to be a violent nomad, and how we can become proficient at the deadly skills we may be forced to use in a crisis.
00:06:46.640In 2005 and 2006, I did a tour in Iraq, I was in Ramadi, and somebody recently asked me why I don't talk about that as much as they thought maybe I should.
00:06:57.180And it's not that I'm avoiding having the conversation.
00:06:59.800It's just that I don't really want to exploit that time.
00:09:05.400You know, whether you're part of an elite class of soldiers or a professional athlete or an actor or anything else that's got, like, you know,
00:09:13.420the supposed little higher rating and status or lifestyle, everyone can write a book.
00:10:02.180And it was, you know, about 45 days later.
00:10:05.840So it's not like it's a bad process or anything.
00:10:09.000It's there to protect the guy and ultimately protect secrets because that's all they're looking for.
00:10:15.780And obviously my book is nowhere near anything related to missions or secrets or any of that crap.
00:10:21.620But for me personally, it was about getting kind of just good, unique information and skill sets out there that can help people, you know, take the fight to, you know, the idiots that we're surrounded by.
00:11:04.200That's the ultimate goal is increase the vigilance and hopefully get people to start acting.
00:11:13.980You know, we react way too much or have zero reaction and end up dead, especially in an active shooter situation.
00:11:21.940So it's just to get people to act out decisions that they've already made so that they're not making decisions in crisis, which is the worst place to try and make a decision.
00:11:53.000I'm like, oh, I should have done this and I should have done that.
00:11:55.240The reality of me actually doing that again is significantly lower because I've thought about, okay, what would I do if this happened again?
00:12:02.180So I can tell that, you know, having that foresight and that idea of what might go wrong actually hedges against something might actually, you know, happen.
00:12:19.140Well, so let's dig into this a little bit.
00:12:20.800You talk about one of the first concepts you talk about in this book, and I think you actually referred to it when I made an Instagram post as well, as you said, the violent nomad.
00:12:29.460Talk to me about what is a violent nomad.
00:12:32.180A violent nomad really represents any person that, you know, with a certain amount of skill sets, and this is man or woman, you know, where you're not necessarily always waiting for 911 to show up.
00:12:46.260You know, some guys have kind of gone down the sheep, sheep, dog, wolf route.
00:12:53.560That's like, hey, how do we get, you know, how do we make sheep more sheep, dog like?
00:12:58.580But the violent nomad is the person who independently has the will to fight and take the fight, you know, to the bad guy and hopefully help the people around them.
00:13:12.620And you look at the different, especially you mentioned like, you know, different school shootings where, you know, at Virginia Tech, you had a classroom full of kids.
00:13:22.520You know, 17 of them were basically executed.
00:13:27.380And it's sad, but I wish, you know, if you're going around a room and executing people one at a time, you know, I want the other 16 after the first shot is fired to get up and take that 120 pound little punk and beat his ass.
00:13:46.760I mean, that's really what the violent nomad philosophy is.
00:13:50.680It's skills and courage for good, not for evil, and start taking the fight to these guys instead of waiting the 7 to 15, you know, minutes for first responders to show up.
00:14:05.920I think we even saw a little bit of this to another degree during September 11th when we saw the plane hit the towers, but then we saw that third plane where the passengers actually fought back.
00:14:17.380And that's always been my thought is like, why did these other people not fight back against a couple of dudes with, you know, some box cutters?
00:14:39.020But what we want to do is, you know, when you talk about crisis, there's only two things you really can control.
00:14:45.080And that is, you know, preparation and then response.
00:14:48.940And as long as you're prepared and you know what your response is going to be, then you really have shortened that, your time in crisis, right?
00:14:57.560And that's the goal is you don't want to, you want to decrease exposure to crisis, which is going to increase survivability.
00:15:07.340And you can only do that by, with proper preparation and then response on the back end and, and then try to totally, you know, eliminate the crisis altogether.
00:15:18.040So, you know, the violent nomad is someone who's aware he's, he or she is watching their alert, you know, they got their head out of their cell phone.
00:15:26.760They know they're, they are prepared and they, and they know exactly how they're going to respond when certain events come their way.
00:15:36.740What I think you're saying here is that you're not trying to stir problems up.
00:15:41.020You're trying to avert those problems, but if something should happen to arise, you know how to handle yourself in the situation.
00:16:05.540I'm sure it's different for different circumstances we find ourselves in, but I'm curious what your thoughts are about that.
00:16:10.100Yeah, that line usually is defined by time, you know, so if you're in a situation where the response isn't immediate, then of course you have to do whatever it takes to win.
00:16:23.360Everything after that should obviously be handled and supported by law enforcement.
00:16:27.620It's, it's not a being, I think there's, you know, being vigilant is much, much different than being a vigilante, you know, of sorts.
00:16:35.520So, uh, you want to be vigilant, but you don't want to cross over into, uh, as much as we'd all love to cross over to the dark side.
00:16:44.020Um, well, we all have it in us, right?
00:16:47.360Uh, I fight it every day, but you know, that, that'll just put me in jail probably.
00:16:52.120But, uh, anyway, you, you definitely want to embrace, you know, law enforcement when it arrives, but until then it's all on you, you know, and that's really the, uh, that time on target or where you find yourself standing on the X is the time in which, you know, you have to do what you need to do until, until something else comes to help.
00:17:13.740Now, some of these skills that you talk about in the book, in my mind are extremely applicable.
00:17:19.100You talk about a bolt bag, everyday carry, things like that, that a lot of the guys listening to this show have heard of and probably implemented to some degree in their own life.
00:17:27.080But then you have other skills in here.
00:17:29.140The ones that come to mind is like rectal concealment and disposing of a body that the odds of somebody facing that is, is very unlikely.
00:17:37.480And I think you may have already answered this because you said sometimes it's important to get the predator's point of view so you know how to combat that.
00:17:43.440But talk to me a little bit about how you decided what skills do I include in here and why do I put this versus this and exclude this skill and include this skill?
00:18:00.900And then I had to narrow it down to the hundred that I thought were most applicable.
00:18:05.560But also at the same time, you know, I didn't want the book to be boring.
00:18:09.360I wanted it to be educational, but also entertaining.
00:18:12.940I also wanted to shed light on some of the techniques and tactics that predators use, you know, on a regular basis.
00:18:21.500And if you see it and you read about it, I'm hoping to, like, literally overemphasize how you, how you wouldn't want to be the body that's being burned or being exposed of.
00:18:36.160I think the visual of that hopefully will heighten people's sentences to the point where, OK, you know what?
00:18:43.700I don't want my family to suffer because I was never found.
00:18:49.520And I'm hoping that it makes you pay attention even more so to the skills before and after.
00:18:55.340When you talk about rectal concealments and stuff, we've heard about this from, you know, this has been, this is like an age-long musion body cavities to hide stuff.
00:19:08.220And the history behind it was intriguing because you, you had, you know, within the world of espionage and spying, it was very popular for cross-border operations and, and getting intelligence from one place to another.
00:19:24.600But in the same, at the same token, you've got prisoners doing it as well.
00:19:28.900And you've got mules and different, different forms of human drug trafficking that goes on as well.
00:19:34.760So I like putting in a little bit of the risque stuff.
00:19:40.920But two, I think that it's good to know this stuff.
00:19:43.780I simplify some of this to, hey, if you've got a kid that you're raising, whether it's a male or female, a little boy or a little girl, there are certain skills in this book that also will allow you to identify things about if you're, maybe if your kids are going down the wrong path in life as well.
00:20:01.000So some of the taboo, risque skills are part entertainment, part education, but really also awareness or to emphasize, you know, at a bigger level, like, all right, I don't want to be a victim of this, you know?
00:20:19.340Well, and I imagine too, is, yeah, you may not have to ever dispose of a body.
00:20:24.980Obviously, that's probably pretty low that you're going to have to do that.
00:20:28.640But some of the concepts in here and the illustrations, everything that you've gone through are going to cross over into other skills and just get you maybe thinking about things a little bit differently than you normally would and get you outside of your comfort zone and thinking in a different area, right?
00:20:43.340Yeah, yeah, I mean, most of the book is all about, you know, we hear about, hey, think outside the box, but hopefully this, you know, gets the Martha Stewart and all of us kind of coming out, you know, it's, this book really is the PG-13 Boy Scout manual.
00:21:01.120I mean, it may be in some cases it's rated R, but it is a, you know, an adult survival book.
00:21:08.620So you have to hit some of these, some of those other skills to emphasize certain points.
00:21:17.200Men, quick pause to tell you about our elite mastermind, The Iron Council.
00:21:20.480This is a group of dedicated, committed, ambitious men working to take their lives at the next level in the areas of their relationships and their health.
00:21:27.780And specifically this month, we're talking about how to build more wealth in our lives and we want you involved.
00:21:32.740We're now close to 100 members and we've got some big plans when that happens.
00:21:36.640I do have some other plans, which we'll be implementing within the group in the next seven days.
00:21:40.220I can't talk about it too much now because I haven't even announced it to the council, but I will tell you that those plans are designed to create even more interaction, more accountability, and more results in the lives of our council members.
00:21:52.160So if you feel like you've reached a plateau in your life where you have this feeling that there's just something more out there, we're going to work alongside you to reach new levels of success and fulfillment in your life.
00:22:02.980So you can check that out at order of man.com slash iron council.
00:22:06.160And I look forward to seeing you on the inside.
00:22:21.240How do you actually start taking it from, okay, great.
00:22:23.520I know some of this stuff to now I need to implement it.
00:22:26.220So if, and when the time ever arises that I actually need to use it in the moment, I'll be skilled and proficient at doing so.
00:22:32.240Well, the beauty of it is all of these are like no tech or low tech, right?
00:22:37.160So it doesn't require, you know, you to go out and spend a ton of money to either build some of the improvised weapons that are mentioned or, you know, try out some of the skills.
00:22:49.300It's usually, most of this is done with, you know, things you can find around the house.
00:22:54.020So that's kind of the first goal overall is I wouldn't want to give people skills that, you know, require, you know, top secret, you know, Navy SEAL weaponry.
00:23:50.620Or you, it's when you're sitting around watching TV, you can practice any, a lot of this stuff,
00:23:56.760especially when you talk about restraint defeat, you know, when you need to get out of, whether it's tape, rope, handcuffs,
00:24:03.780these are things that you can do when you're sitting around watching TV or turn into a game or just great conversation.
00:24:11.760So I think everyone will find a way to kind of practice it and be proficient in certain things.
00:24:18.440But, you know, the goal is, is just practice something, you know, and there's a hundred things in there to kind of play around with at any given moment.
00:24:26.020And it also, at the same time, as you read these things, you start finding yourself becoming a little more resourceful.
00:24:32.500I say, use a, a hairpin, you might turn around and go, Oh, I can also do that with a paperclip.
00:24:39.300So, you know, and that's kind of the goal is it gives you the basics.
00:24:44.540And then from there, anyone can grow whatever they want out of it.
00:25:01.300I think, you know, what's really interesting is we had a guy on the local radio show who builds a ceramic plates as far as I can gather, but basically bulletproof plates that are adapted to fit into kids backpacks.
00:25:13.880And he had a caller come on and the caller was upset that he would actually build or design this product and how horrible it is.
00:25:21.760And the reality is, is that's horrible that we need to talk about it, but let's prepare and protect our children and let them be in a point where they can defend and protect themselves as well.
00:25:31.460No, I think I, I, there's a lot of companies out there building some pretty cheap body armor, which is, I think is great.
00:25:37.560I mean, that's, that's your, it's an advantage that you can have over a bullet, you know?
00:25:42.960And when you break it down, I mean, it's, uh, it's not a bad thing to have.
00:25:48.740And with, uh, school shootings, yeah, I mean, the way that it looks, you know, and the perception of that is one thing, but if it ever happened, you'd be glad you, you'd be glad that you had it, you know, in a backpack or your briefcase, your messenger bag, whatever it is you carry.
00:26:05.420Some of the ones I've, I've played around with, I mean, are very lightweight.
00:26:09.360You don't even know they're there once you stick them in there and, uh, you know, you kind of forget about it.
00:26:14.820You know, that you've got your own little Captain America shield.
00:26:21.140Well, let's, let's move on to this, this conversation of psychological warfare, because I said, I think this is something that every single human being on the planet deals with from the guy who's being tried to, you know, trying to, to sell something to you.
00:26:33.580To, I remember when I went through basic training and the drill sergeants, uh, employing psychological warfare on us to situations that I'm sure you've been in, in, in warlike environments.
00:26:44.180Talk to me about the importance of understanding psychological warfare.
00:26:47.860Um, well, in, in terms of the book, it was a, you know, one showing how creative, uh, you know, whether you're a good guy predator or a bad guy predator can be and, and, and leveraging, you know, different tools and skills to, uh, create one big fake or, you know, deception.
00:27:10.140Um, and so, you know, how does this relate to us?
00:27:15.000I mean, when you talk about sociopaths, um, and psychopaths, uh, these behavioral, um, whether they're learned traits or you're born with them, I think, uh, you know, that's still a debate.
00:27:27.880These are, these are the, the mindsets that you're dealing with.
00:27:31.440They will go to great lengths to trick you and manipulate you into thinking whatever it is they want you to think.
00:27:39.080And so, uh, psychological warfare, it's important to recognize it.
00:27:45.540And I, you call it psychological warfare, but at the end of the day, it's, it's, it's deception and it's human behavior that's, uh, it's being used to, you know, most of the time inflict harm or hurt people.
00:27:59.260Um, and so, you know, we're surrounded 6% of the people that, you know, that are in corporate America or that we're surrounded by each day have, you know,
00:28:08.420these, uh, what you call like problem personalities, you know, so you have the sociopaths, the psychopaths, the emotionally unstable, the paranoid, all of these can cause all kinds of problems in your life.
00:28:21.940And, uh, so pointing it out is important because we probably will face this and more likely to face, you know, more of the, you know, the sociopathic tendencies of some of the people we're surrounded by.
00:28:34.700Then we will like, you know, an earthquake or natural disaster of any sort or a terrorist attack.
00:28:39.680And so in the book, it shows how one person can make bad guys believe that an entire neighborhood hates them, right?
00:28:47.460It's not about, you know, vandalism and different degrees and Molotov cocktails to a certain compound and, and, and letter drops that, uh, that make a bad guy believe the whole neighborhood wants him out of there.
00:29:02.320He's been ID'd and you want him to leave. But the reality is it's just one person doing it so that, uh, he'll, uh, basically show himself and make, make some mistakes so that the, the good guy can, uh, take care of business.
00:29:17.220But sure. Yeah. The bigger picture is, you know, there's a lot of crazy people, uh, around us all the time. You need to be aware of that.
00:29:25.400So how do you determine when psychological warfare or deception is being used on you?
00:29:31.000You know, that's, um, when you talk about the psychology of all this, I mean, I, obviously I don't have a degree in that, but ultimately I think you have to do some fact finding and follow your gut.
00:29:42.580Uh, if you have a certain situation that appears, you know, sometimes it's, uh, too good to be true type situations.
00:29:50.620I like to use catfishing as one of the examples that, you know, we, we all probably face or will face at some point.
00:29:59.920If you're on social media enough. And this is, uh, you know, this could be a housewife or, uh, some single woman somewhere or a man that, uh, you know, is sitting around bored and they try to, uh, get a, an online relationship going.
00:30:17.740And usually it starts, they usually throw a hook out there. That's kind of like a, uh, a story of sorrow. And they try to get you hooked in emotionally. I had one recently that hit me up saying, Hey, I'm single. You know, um, I was, uh, I was raped. I was stabbed six times, had my throat cut and survived.
00:30:37.740Now I live, you know, somewhat paranoid. What can you do to help me? So not the bat. That's quite the hook, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
00:30:48.460So of course I, you know, at first I was like, Whoa, this is a little too much information right off the bat, especially from a supposed victim. You know, most victims just don't lay it out there.
00:30:58.700They don't want to put it out there. Yeah. Yeah. It just sounds like it's just something's off a little bit.
00:31:02.680Yeah. There's something off. And then, you know, so right off the bat, you're like, all right, this is a behavioral right off. I was like, there's some behavior here. That's not normal. And I think we, we tend to ignore those signs, you know? Um, and then before you know it, you find yourself manipulated. So I think, you know, once again, you got to pay attention to what you're hearing and seeing. And a lot of times your gut will, uh, reveal the truth. And we just, you know, we just have a hard time interpolating that.
00:31:32.420And, and actually, you know, saying no, or not allowing ourselves to be manipulated because some of these people are very, very good. Um, but you have to be on guard and kind of looking for it in order to, uh, detect it.
00:31:46.520Right. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think, uh, as, as humans, we have a tendency to let our emotions cloud all of our decisions. I deal with it in the financial planning world. You deal with it in your line of work is when we start to tie our actions to the emotions and the way that we feel about things.
00:32:02.420It might serve as great for finding love, but it also exposes ourselves to a lot of the potential risks that we may run into rather than being a little bit skeptical always about what's going on and allowing the situation to unfold before we make those emotional type decisions.
00:32:20.000Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's easy to kind of, you know, you don't want to just always know, be the default or, you know, run away from it. I mean, the reality is it could be something true and sincere, but you know, in that case, you know, she kept on going, sending pictures, every picture. And this is some good skills for your listeners is that anytime you, whether it's Facebook or any of these dating sites, download the picture to your phone.
00:32:48.420Then go to Google and type in reverse photo search. And there's a free little webpage that'll pop up. And then there's two buttons. It'll say import. So you import the photo. And then the second button says reverse search. You hit reverse search.
00:33:08.020And what it'll do is go across the entire internet and it'll take that picture and you'll find out what URLs and websites that it's attached to. More times than not, if it's a scam or if it's a fake person, an avatar, a persona that's trying to either manipulate you or, you know, scam you in some sense.
00:33:30.940You put that photo in there, you'll see it. When I did it with this, this particular woman, it was attached to a blogger out of Australia. She was using that woman's picture as her picture on a pro.
00:33:44.140Then when she sent me all the little nudie shots, those pictures I threw in there to reverse search. And sure enough, they were tied to, you know, all the different, you know, porn sites and whatever else.
00:33:57.160So everything about this person was fake, even though she was presenting very serious and real issues. I mean, there's some, there's a lot of tools out there these days, especially with the online kind of social issues.
00:34:12.860Another thing I want to talk about is I think that as a military guy like yourself, it would be very easy for this to get bogged down in acronyms, which it's not, but you do use two acronyms, the COA and BLUF, B-L-U-F. So can you talk to me a little bit about those and what those mean there?
00:34:29.380Sure. The, in our world, and I say our world, when you talk about like the military and you know, this, you have courses of action, you present courses of action. These are options really of, and that's what COA. And so in the illustrations, I wanted, I wanted the illustrations to be as simple as possible, no matter how complex the skill was.
00:34:51.880And I think we accomplished that by breaking it down by courses of action. Um, you have a CONOP, which is your concept of operation, which really defines the skill. Then the courses of action are really the steps that you take to, um, do the skill. And then the BLUF, the BLUF is the bottom line up front.
00:35:13.620And the bottom line up front really is a, a summary, sometimes tongue and tongue in cheek of the skill, you know, so, you know, when you're talking about disposing of a body, the BLUF on that one, of course, no body, no crime. Um, right.
00:35:30.040A little tongue in cheek, but it is a very, you know, common summary of what the skill is all about. Following the violent nomad kind of good guy, assassin path that book takes. I mean, that's, uh, that's what that, it's basically, uh, the violent nomad and in a, in a fictional world would compare it to something like a Jason Bourne with all these skills and all these abilities.
00:35:54.140And that's, that's kind of your, uh, that's the path that I chose for the hundred deadly skills to kind of come to life.
00:36:01.340Right. And I think it's actually something, obviously we may not need to take it to the extreme, but I definitely think that it's something most of us because of the types of lifestyles that we live probably ought to consider implementing this just to give ourselves a little bit more balance when it comes to protecting ourselves.
00:36:19.820And as men, you know, being protectors and providers and, and keeping those around us that, that we're responsible for safe. So I definitely think we need to implement some of these things.
00:36:28.680Yeah, I hope so. I hope, uh, I hope every guy grabs this information. And if it, like I said, at a minimum, it's all about awareness, you know, and if it increases your awareness, great. If you have to use these skills, you know, that's, that's awesome too.
00:36:44.480But if you're having to use them, that's usually means you're facing something bad. So that's not so good. But if you got the skills, you use them.
00:36:51.940Well, so along the same lines of men being primarily the protector, I mean, that's society looks, I think, generally to men to be that protector. Talk to me about the concept, which you alluded to earlier, which is the sheep versus the sheep wolf versus the actual wolf, or excuse me, the sheep dog versus the actual wolf.
00:37:08.000Yeah. So there's a, there's a West, there was a, um, a West point professor, Dave Grossman. He he's written a couple of books, but most popular was, uh, on killing on killing. Yeah. And he wrote combat. Um, and he really was the guy that made, uh, the metaphor of sheep, sheep, dogs, and wolves kind of come to life.
00:37:28.640But it was through a interview he did with a Vietnam vet, um, asking him, you know, how do you break down society? And in the Vietnam vet, you know, answered with, you know, it's their sheep, sheep, dogs, and wolves. And then Grossman, um, ended up kind of expanding on that, that metaphor to then really define, you know, people.
00:37:52.740And so sheep are, is all of, is everyone really. We all want to just go about our day, make money, live life, experience as much as possible, whatever it is. That's what we want to do. And sheep do it with the comfort of knowing that there are sheep dogs there to protect. And the sheep dogs represent your first responders, law enforcement, and the military. Um, and then of course you have wolves.
00:38:21.580The wolves represent all the wolves represent all the threats we face each day. Now, now threats have exponentially increased and there are hundreds, you know, um, you have, these days you have technical threats, you have, you know, which, which is everything from audio, video, tracking devices, uh, and, and cyber crimes. You have health threats, you know, with, uh, you know, a new virus that seems to pop up every day.
00:38:47.780You have raids, you have raids, robbery, ransom, you know, these are, these threats are, you know, uh, you know, uh, you know, that's, that's your petty, it's everything from getting pickpocketed to being murdered. Um, sure.
00:38:59.000And then, and then of course you have, you know, environmental threats, you know, it seems like every day we're hearing about a new earthquake or, or, uh, you know, hurricane flooding, um, whatever's going on around us.
00:39:11.780And then, and then it goes, you've got the more nefarious, discrete threats, you know, like all the different agencies that work against us, you know, you, you've got state sponsored cyber attacks, uh, you know, different countries trying to, you know, competitive intelligence where they're trying to grab our trade secrets and take them to market before we do.
00:39:31.180Cause it's all about economic warfare these days, but it's the stuff we don't see.
00:39:35.860And then, and then you have the threat that never goes away and that's terrorism.
00:39:39.320So the wolf comes in, you know, many shades, many shapes, it's important to really identify them and, and, and, and know them.
00:39:48.900And that's what, that's what, that's exactly what, you know, a sheep should do is strive to be more sheepdog like in the way that you become more sheepdog like is through awareness of all of these threats and then saying, okay, now what am I going to do to either prevent myself from being involved in any of that?
00:40:07.440Or how am I going to react in order to increase my survivability?
00:40:15.420And I, and I got to tell you, I, I appreciate the work you're doing because I can see how these things and just being more aware is going to be applicable in my life and help me be the better man that I want to be.
00:40:24.300And I should be for my family and my community.