Left of Bang Quotes

“Gary Klein is a renowned and expert researcher on decision-making and cites the following aspects that experts have the ability to see which novices do not.196 1. Experts see patterns that novices do not detect. 2. Experts see anomalies—events that did not happen. 3. Experts see the big picture (situational awareness). 4. Experts create opportunities and improvisations. 5. Experts have the ability to predict future events using their previous experiences. 6. Experts see differences too small for novices to detect. 7. Experts know their own limitations. With an understanding of the differences between the experienced and the novice, we can begin to design a plan to overcome the shortfalls. Fortunately, understanding that it isn’t a “matter of intelligence, but a matter of experience” means that we can systematically set about gaining the experience necessary.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Intuition is nothing more than a person’s sense about a situation influenced by experience and knowledge.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“The combat profiling threshold is called the Combat Rule of Three: When you observe three anomalies or indicators, you must make a decision. Do not wait for more information. Three indicators are enough information with which to act. Does this mean that you must have three anomalies to make a decision? No. In some situations, one anomaly or indicator is sufficient. For instance, following the usual rules of engagement, if an individual exhibits a hostile act or hostile intent, one indicator is enough. Someone presenting a weapon in a hostile way toward a Marine on patrol or cop on the street is all it takes to engage that individual with deadly force.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Regardless of what situation you find yourself in, or what role you are playing at the moment, you must have a set of pre-established decisions to make based on what you observe. Otherwise, you’ll freeze, take too long, or make a decision that is not in your best interest.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“The first question: is anyone an obvious hostile threat? If so, what is your plan to deal with it? If not, then is anyone giving off three (or more) behavioral indicators that they are an anomaly? Remember, when you observe three indicators, you have to act! Decide which type of behaviors would warrant different responses. Action may simply be contacting the person to ask some questions and observing them up close. But do not wait until further indicators are exhibited because it may be too late.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“The three steps can be summed up with a few simple questions: First, what is going on here? Second, what would cause someone to stand out and why? Third, what would I do about it?”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Anomalies that rise above the baseline are things that 1) are happening that shouldn’t or don’t normally happen or 2) are present that shouldn’t be or aren’t normally present. Anomalies that fall below the baseline are things that 1) are not happening that should happen or normally occur or 2) are not present that either should be or normally are present.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Identifying threats means establishing a baseline and looking for anomalies. A baseline is what is normal for an environment, situation, or individual.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Understanding the limbic system and its core freeze, flight, or fight responses is the first phase in detecting a threat. It’s important to remember that the enemy stalking a Marine on patrol or a seemingly helpless woman on her way home is under duress. This stress manifests itself in physical actions. If we look for these particular physical actions when our limbic system gives us the “heads up, something’s not right” signal, we’ll be able to operate effectively “left of bang.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“A good heuristic decision is made by 1) knowing what to look for, 2) knowing when enough information is enough (the “threshold of decision”), and 3) knowing what decision to make.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Never Forget. Never Quit. Semper Fidelis.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“We do not claim to be experts. We only claim that we are striving to become experts and are taking the same journey that we hope we have inspired you to take. It isn’t a journey that any of us will ever complete. As soon as you believe that you are in expert in your field, you will no longer have the drive to keep learning. Humans are diverse, adapting and changing; there is always something to learn. The six domains of combat profiling and the content in this book should provide you with the foundation to grow in this pursuit. Good luck. Never Forget. Never Quit. Semper Fidelis.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“On that note, the three decisions that a combat profiler may make are Kill, Capture, or Contact—in that order. What does this mean? It doesn’t mean that the first thing that combat profilers do is kill. It means that, in any given situation, in a potentially hostile environment, the first decision that combat profilers should make is to kill or prepare to kill. If an individual does not commit a hostile act, demonstrate hostile intent, or provide indicators of an immediate threat, then the combat profiler moves to the next decision—capture. If the individual does not give off indicators of a potential threat or if the person does not appear to be of significant intelligence value, then the combat profiler moves to the next and final decision—contact. If, for some reason, the individual gives off further indicators, then the combat profiler may move back up the decision tree to capture or kill if necessary. This simple decision tree can be depicted as such:”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Condition Black. Condition Black is characterized by when a person’s heart rate reaches a point that is counterproductive (above 175 beats per minute) and that person begins to lose awareness of the surroundings. A person in Condition Black can no longer cognitively process information and may completely shut down.7”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Getting left of bang requires two things. The first is a mindset and mentality to actively search your area for people that don’t fit in. The second is the knowledge to know what causes someone to stand out from the crowd. I”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Humans are not good at multitasking. In general, humans only look natural when naturally focused on doing one thing. Furthermore, multitasking is a myth. This relates to the principle above that humans have significant cognitive limitations. People can only do one thing at a time well; when they attempt to do more than one thing at a time, focus, ability, and productivity suffer. When your attention is divided, and you’re concentrating on doing more than one thing, your behavior and speech will appear unnatural. For instance, if someone is actually reading a paper, then their attention and mental energy will be focused on reading the paper. If, however, that person is only acting as if they are reading the paper and instead is attempting to conduct surveillance, then that person’s behavior will not look natural. Or imagine, for instance, conversing with someone attempting to discreetly watch someone in the crowd of people around you to get some type of subtle direction from that person. The person to whom you are talking will not be focused on the conversation. Instead, his mental energy will be divided. His action will be jerky, and his speech will seem choppy, broken, or slower than normal. His brain will have to switch back and forth between activities.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Humans are not generally spontaneous or random. This principle is related to the second principle above. As much as we think we are unpredictable and random, we really are very predictable and follow regular patterns. A study that tracked 10,000 people via cell phone concluded that people display a very high degree of regularity when they travel, because they return to only a few, very frequented locations.43 A more mundane example is the game Rock, Paper, Scissors. Research shows that, even in games that rely on being unpredictable, humans are, in fact, very predictable and not at all random. We involuntarily mimic others, and we predictably attempt to come back from losses—at least in Rock, Paper, Scissors—by doing whatever beat us in the last round.44 This means that our enemy will set patterns that, if we take the time to analyze,”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Humans will run, fight, or freeze. Humans are driven by fight-or-flight responses, which translate into certain autonomic responses and behaviors. We will discuss these responses later as well as the autonomic responses to stress. For now, it is sufficient to say that our bodies often exhibit uncontrollable, automatic reactions to our emotions in response to the situations we are in. Because these reactions are automatic and uncontrollable, they are reliable indicators”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Humans have significant cognitive limitations. It has been shown that imposing cognitive load can help uncover liars. A liar must create a story and monitor the fabrication to ensure it sounds believable while attempting to maintain a believable appearance. While telling a lie, the liar must monitor the interviewer’s reaction to assess how he or she is doing; the liar is also taxed mentally because a lie requires continuous effort whereas telling the truth is automatic. So as thoughtful questions are brought to the table, forcing the liar to spend more mental energy creating a lie and keeping the lies straight, the liar becomes vulnerable to leaking emotions and other indicators that can alert us to deception.40 Additionally, humans cannot divide their attention well. The more tasks a person divides his attention between, the poorer he will perform any of those tasks. Another example is short-term memory. Humans can only remember, on average, between five to nine items using their short-term memory. All of this is important”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“In a study conducted by Northeastern University network scientists, it was determined that human behavior, regarding patterns of movement and mobility, is 93 percent predictable. By using information collected from cell phones, physics professor Albert-Laszlo Barabási determined that human movement patterns are predictable regardless of distance traveled or demographic categories (such as age, gender, urban versus rural, etc.).37 In short, “humans follow simple reproducible patterns.”38 Not only do people follow patterns, but also humans are reluctant to change those patterns until the behavior becomes unproductive.39 In fact, even if faced with clear failure, people often follow the same behavioral patterns in the hopes they will work again.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“simply”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“OODA, stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. This is also called the Boyd Decision Cycle. This process, articulated by Colonel (Ret.) John Boyd, describes the four main steps that a person, group, or organization takes from observing a phenomenon to responding. This is a very helpful way to envision how people observe their surroundings (Observe), make sense of what they see (Orient), decide what to do (Decide), and then execute what they’ve decided (Act). However, just as BAMCIS simply tells a Marine to begin and complete a plan without teaching them how to plan, OODA states that a decision must be made without explaining how to make that decision or what Marines should be seeking to decide intelligently.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution ten minutes later.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“There’s no way to tell from one Marine to the next who will have the keenness of intellect to make good decisions on the battlefield and who will fail. Currently, it’s not entirely based on the training they receive. A Marine’s ability to make decisions is mostly due to his or her life and experiences. The Marine cannot control much of this. Some Marines can quickly identify certain patterns in Afghanistan because they have, for instance, experiences staying safe in dangerous areas of New York or L.A. They have what we call “thick file folders,” a significant amount of relatable experiences they can quickly access in similar situations abroad. But certain Marines having these experiences is simply coincidental—they just happened to have grown up in a dangerous environment. Other Marines aren’t so lucky and do not have the experiences needed to make the same decisions driven by intuition.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Every situation must be considered potentially dangerous, and you must be constantly ready to take action if a threat emerges.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Malcolm Gladwell skillfully demonstrates in his book Outliers,”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“An anomaly is any variation from the baseline—and what we are primarily searching for is anomalies.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Identifying threats means establishing a baseline and looking for anomalies. A baseline is what is normal for an environment, situation, or individual. Generally,”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“But for a combat profiler to identify the anomalies that influence his decisions, he needs to establish a baseline of behavior.”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

“Understanding the limbic system and its core freeze, flight, or fight responses is the first phase in detecting a threat. It’s important to remember that the enemy stalking a Marine on patrol or a seemingly helpless woman on her way home is under duress. This stress manifests itself in physical actions. If we look for these particular physical actions when our limbic system gives us the “heads up, something’s”
― Patrick Van Horne, Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life