Ten Years of National Situational Awareness Day

The day the proclamation was certified. Submitted by Pretty Loaded in November 2015, with Marlo Anderson, founder of the National Day Calendar.

Ten years ago, we celebrated the first National Situational Awareness Day. The year before, I filled out a form.

Everyone told me to apply for a self-defense day. That was the category people understood. But I was teaching Pretty Loaded classes then, and I already knew self-defense is what’s left when everything else has failed. Awareness is what keeps you from getting there.

So I asked for situational awareness instead.

I thought I was asking for a day. What I got was ten years of watching what happens when people decide to pay attention, and when they don’t.

What’s changed

Accidents are now the third leading cause of death in America. Not all of them can be prevented by paying attention, but many can. Since that first day in 2016, the phone has moved into every moment of our lives, including behind the wheel and on the sidewalk, and distraction is now part of how people get hurt.

I wrote about this in Absolutely Unqualified:

You are far more likely to be hurt by a moment you did not notice than by a person who chose you. Situational awareness gets taught as a defense against predators, and it is one. But most of what it protects you from is not a predator at all. It is a step you did not see, a car you did not hear, water deeper than it looked, and thirty seconds of your attention somewhere else.

Who calls me has changed too.

Today the calls come from corporations that want their employees to get home safe. From hospitals, where the people who take care of everyone else are too often the ones getting hurt. And from a national food delivery company, which asked me to make training videos for its delivery partners, people who walk up to a stranger’s door, in a neighborhood they don’t know, dozens of times a day.

My safety videos have now been viewed more than 25 million times on YouTube. Ten years ago, I thought I was teaching a class. It turns out I was starting a conversation the country needed to have.

What hasn’t changed

Awareness still buys you time, and time is the only thing that changes outcomes. Every story I’ve collected in ten years turns on a few seconds that someone either had or didn’t.

That’s the whole thing. The rest is practice.

If you’re new here, start with these:

Situational Awareness Made Easy. The simplest version of the idea.

You Are Probably the Perfect Target. How predators choose, and how to change that.

Intuition: How to Trust Your Instincts and Stay Safe. What your body knows before your mind catches up.

Watch one thing today

I made this video in memory of Dru Sjodin, a University of North Dakota student who was abducted from a Grand Forks mall parking lot in 2003.

Three more worth your time:

The full library is here.

How to observe the day

Ten seconds.

Parking lots are one of the places criminals watch most because the moments getting in and out of a car are when people are most distracted: keys, bags, kids, phones.

So the next time you get out of your car, stop before you open the door. Look up and look around. Notice who is there and where they are going.

When you get back in, lock the doors first. Before your phone, before your seatbelt, before anything else.

That’s it. That’s the day. Do it tomorrow too, and the day after, and eventually you stop having to remember.

This year is different

The hardcover is out now, and on September 26, the Kindle edition of Absolutely Unqualified comes out. It’s my whole story, from the fear I carried as a child to the day I froze and everything I built after, including the parts I haven’t told publicly, with the training woven through it.