Prep School: Unarmed Self Defense

By Ash Bauer

Table of Contents

Introduction              2

CLASSES              3

Eskrima              4

Krav Maga              4

LINE              5

MCMAP              6

Muay Thai              6

Sambo              7

Silat              8

EMERGENCY TECHNIQUES              8

Rock in a Sock              9

Lock on a Rope              9

Bike Helmet              9

Dumbells              9

Bottles              9

Hammers              10

BEST BODY PARTS TO ATTACK              10

Temple              10

Nasion              10

Philtrum              10

Hook to the Jaw              11

Adam’s Apple              11

Small of Back              11

Cerebellum Base              11

Testicles              11

Brain Buster              11

Abdomen              11

Rib Cage              11

Head Wrench              12

Choke Hold              12

Ears              12

Eyes              12

CONCLUSION              12

OTHER PREP SCHOOL LESSONS              12

Copyright 2012 Ash Bauer

Kindle Edition

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Welcome to Prep School!

It’s easy to be intimidated by a hardcore prepper with 30 years of food stores, multiple bug-out locations, and an off-the-grid power system. Prep School exists to let you in on three big prepping secrets.

SECRET ONE: Nobody starts perfect.

When those prepping powerhouses first started they were just as clueless as you are. Even Navy Seals had things to learn.

Nobody expects you to become a prepping expert overnight. Prep School is for people who are interested in prepping for a crisis or disaster but aren’t really sure where to start. Each article tackles a specific topic such as urban ranching, post-crisis professions, and the special survival needs of ladies.

If you’re an advanced prepper who could use a quick refresher on a specific topic you can spend 99 cents on a single essay. There’s no need to waste your money or make you wade past information you could teach in search of the good stuff you need. If you’re just getting started, you can pick up individual 99 cent books or save a little cash and pick up our $2.99 Theme Packs where we bundle 4 related articles into a single book. Only buy what you need. Spend the rest on your preps.

SECRET TWO: Prepping is fun

Stockpiling food and ammo may sound grim and intimidating, but you know what most preppers do in real life on a daily basis? Sports and crafting. It’s the same stuff millions of ordinary Americans do every day for fun. On the sport side, you’ll find people who love archery, shooting, and martial arts - all things kids do at summer camp for the sheer joy of it. As for crafters, you can find entire suburban stores dedicated to cranking out supplies for beer making, knitting, canning, soap making, and sewing. Etsy exists just to give crafters a way to get rid of all the fun stuff they make. People create things because it’s fun. Preppers are normal people with a cause.

The difference between mainstream sports and crafting versus prepping is focus. Sure, the skills are fun, but they’ll also help keep you alive if the shit hits the fan.

You’ll find people in prepper communities are thrilled to make friends (and future allies). The thing people forget about the hardcore preppers who are ready to survive whatever the world throws at them is they got that way because they honestly enjoyed the process. Welcome in.

SECRET THREE: Prepping isn’t just for The End Of The World As We Know It.

Natural disasters happen. Hurricane Katrina is the most extreme example in recent American history, but there are countless smaller tornadoes, floods, blizzards, and locally relevant disasters which result in the power going out for anywhere from a day to a week. When that happens, a well prepared person doesn’t have to be afraid. Instead of hunger, fear, and violence a prepper has food, security and safety.

Getting started with prepping is all about baby steps that won’t interfere with your real life.

In this article, you’ll learn about techniques for unarmed self defense and the best classes to take for your own long term protection.

Introduction

People like to pretend that self defense classes are all about discipline, muscle tone, and healthy exercise. Honestly, though, people take everything from karate to kickboxing because it's fun. You get out of the house, you work up a good sweat, and you get to hang out with people who share your hobby. Plus, there's something incredibly satisfying about punching and kicking. Just look at people playing Wii Sports. Your sweetest pacifist will turn into an air pounding maniac if you put them in front of Wii Boxing, and they'll love every second of it.

As a prepper, you want to pay special attention to your choice of self defense classes. Think carefully about your real needs. Karate may look cool, but how useful is it in real life if you're up against a guy with a knife?

In case of a crisis or serious disaster, you're likely to face types of danger that don't really exist now - namely long term power outages and food shortages. Let's be honest. Unless your neighbors are preppers, they probably don't have more than 3 to 7 days of food in the house. Sure, you have plenty of guns, but you don't really want to shoot every misguided person who tries breaking into your house in search of food. You need to know how to safely, securely subdue your neighbors without necessarily killing them.

Luckily, there are several excellent unarmed self defense programs designed to teach you how to take down an armed opponent without getting yourself injured. Learning one of these will be a great way to establish strength and dominance in a post-crisis world. Taking someone down without hurting them is actually a lot harder than injuring or killing an attacker.  They'll know you could have killed them but chose not to. Word will get around. This could be the first step in building post-crisis allies.

Gentle unarmed self defense is perfect for dealing with misguided and desperate neighbors, coworkers, friends and other people you honestly wouldn't want to hurt. If you're in a hostile situation where you're unarmed and need to take someone else down, you might also want to know some of the more brutal forms of self defense.

Therefore, this book gives you a quick overview of the history and uses of the best unarmed self defense classes for preppers. Most major metro areas should offer classes in any of these disciplines.

To tide you over until you get proper training, this book ends with some quick, brutal attacks designed to inflict the most amount of pain. These are good for buying yourself time to get to your guns in a true emergency.

Remember, you're picking these classes because you're a smart prepper, but don't forget to have fun with it. There's something immensely satisfying about knowing you can bring down someone half your age and twice your weight. Go for the self defense training. Stay for the fun.

CLASSES

Eskrima

Eskrima is a deceptive martial art born in the Philippines. It can look like harmless dancing or some lighting fast play with a couple of sticks – right up until the point where someone takes you out

Eskrima had to be carefully disguised as a harmless folk art because the Catholic Church banned it for 450 years. Magellan (of globe mapping fame) converted an entire Philippine tribe to Catholicism. The neighbors took the change personally. They hamstrung Magellan then used Eskrima to beat him so savagely even the people behind the Spanish Inquisition were horrified.  The Filipinos quickly learned to disguise Eskrima as a folk dance whenever Spaniards were around.

One of the really useful things about Eskrima is the way it teaches people to use the same motions bare handed, with sticks, or with blades - and always come out resulting in deadly force. People who are familiar with Eskrima associate it with the distinctive short sticks that are part of the folk dancing heritage, but knocking them away doesn’t disarm a practitioner – it just frees their hands for new levels of brutal violence.

There’s a fast paced Hong Kong movie feel to Eskrima that makes it appealing to people who want a dramatic fighting style. However, when two people who know it go up against one another, they typically both come away seriously bloodied. You can do incredible damage with hands, sticks or knives, but the cost is you’re going to take a beating, too.

When one person knows Eskrima and the other one has spent his pre-crisis years lifting weights in a gym the result is like taking a knife to a gun fight. The untrained person is going to lose. Dramatically. If you learn Eskrima, you will end up equally good at fighting with bare hands, any sticks you can find nearby, or knives. You'll also know how to disguise what you're doing as a harmless folk dance, just in case you need to hide your new skill from authorities.

Krav Maga

There's a good reason this is one of the most common serious self defense classes in the United States. Israeli born Krav Maga is what happens when action movies meet real life. It starts with the assumption that you, an unarmed innocent, will be attacked by a group of people armed with guns, knives, and some extra weapons hidden away that you can’t see. It ends with you disarming them, disabling them, and running the heck away before they can call for help.

Krav Maga was developed in the 1930’s to help Jews survive and flee from Nazi attacks. After the creation of Israel, it was adopted by the Israeli Defense Forces. Because of its focus on real world situations, it is popular with quite a few other national defense forces around the world.

Unlike the Russian art of Sambo, with its emphasis on wrestling your opponent to the ground, Krav Maga stresses keeping off the ground at all costs. Once you’re down, you’re vulnerable to being kicked to death by a crowd of attackers. Therefore, the goal is to use low kicks to vulnerable areas like feet and shins, a variety of punches, and a huge emphasis on flowing naturally between offense and defense as you disarm your attackers.

One of the things that really sets Krav Maga apart is the encouragement to disable your attackers enough to run away. Sure, Krav Maga assumes you should be able to take on half a dozen knife wielding attackers, but there’s no illusion you can outlast them all. Disarm them, get to safety, regroup with allies. Then you take them down - permanently.

Krav Maga also always assumes that you’re unarmed and your attackers have multiple weapons. This means you don’t need to carry a weapon- other people do it for you. First you disarm your attacker. Then you arm yourself with their weapon. This makes you look nice and harmless while actually being the biggest badass in the room.

The huge emphasis on surviving real, modern attacks makes Krav Maga amazingly versatile and useful. There are few situations a well trained practitioner couldn’t survive. Therefore, it's one of the top recommended classes for preppers of all ages and genders.

LINE

In the 1980's, the United States Marines developed an unarmed combat technique designed to keep soldiers alive in any combat situation. This meant the soldiers had to be able to defend themselves blind (in case of smoke, gas or darkness), defend themselves while physically fatigued after a long day of battle, and defend themselves while wearing full combat gear.

The end result was incredibly deadly. That was great for the Marines, but not so great for anyone unlucky enough to fight them.

LINE training is grueling. It also requires constant practice, as the goal is to create a reflex-like system of muscle memory. However, it's incredibly effective - especially for women who may have to face off against larger, physically stronger men.

Due to changes in international approaches to warfare, the US Maries developed a less lethal personal self defense system. This made a lot of sense.  As more countries began recruiting child soldiers and other involuntary combatants, the Marines wanted to ensure those people could be safely taken down without killing them.

Officially, the Marines teach MCMAP now, but if you ask around, you can still find people willing to teach LINE.

MCMAP

The United States Marines jokingly call this Semper Fu. As discussed earlier, the problem with LINE was it became too darn deadly. By the 1990’s, the Marines were being sent into increasingly dangerous places where they were expected to pacify people without putting them six feet under. If you’d rather kill your attacker than risk them getting up again, find some Marine vets willing to teach you LINE.

The newer Marine Corps Martial Arts Program is a kinder, gentler version of LINE which trains the Marines to do anything from cause severe pain to functionally destroy whatever body part they attack. The Marines are trained to not only use their bodies, but also found objects in their environment (rocks, bricks, and sticks) as well as knives and all the parts of a gun that don’t go bang.

This is a good discipline for people who might end up in a situation where their attackers are confused. If your attacker might be under the influence of drugs, mental disability, or frightening trauma MCMAP is a good way to quickly stop an attack without necessarily killing someone. In case of a crisis or disaster, where people might be operating out of sheer thoughtless desperation, MCMAP is a good way to subdue them before they become a danger to themselves and to you.

Because MCMAP has a huge focus on teamwork, if you’re attacked by a larger, better armed group, MCMAP teaches you how to take down the most dangerous people first while still leaving you in good enough shape to handle whoever comes at you next. In case of a serious long term crisis or disaster, that makes MCMAP an excellent self defense choice for prepper families or couples.

Muay Thai

Muay Thai is a self defense technique also known as “The Art of Eight Limbs,” because it treats knees and elbows with as much respect as it does hands and feet.

That’s one heck of an advantage against an untrained opponent. Someone coming at you with a knife isn’t expecting you to knee them in the jaw, grab their shoulders for balance, then kick them in the gut while you happen to have your leg up there anyway. It’s brutal. Muay Thai began as a way for Thai soldiers to defend themselves if they lost their swords. It quickly developed a reputation for being worse than a stabbing.

One of the drawbacks to Muay Thai is the person on the offensive will end up pretty darn bloody. All those brutal blows take their toll on fragile hands and knees. On the other hand, legend has it a sufficiently advanced practitioner can use it to take down a buffalo.

Muay Thai isn’t subtle or graceful. It’s all about giving an attacker such a brutal beating they never get up again. Imagine all the rules of boxing designed to protect the athletes. Muay Thai considers throwing them away an instruction manual for success. You can specialize in learning advanced techniques for attacking people with your elbows, knees, feet and fists. Since most people who participate in Mixed Martial Arts don’t end up hospitalized, that sport is sometimes trotted out as an example of watered down Muay Thai.

If you don’t have any joint troubles, aren’t bothered by the sight of blood, and have some anger issues, Muay Thai is an excellent discipline for protecting yourself and your loved ones.

Sambo

Any country that could produce someone like Vladimir Putin (second only to Teddy Roosevelt for Manliest World Leader) is bound to produce an impressive fighting discipline.

Sambo is a Russian acronym for a phrase that literally translates to, “self defense without weapons.” It blends the kind of folk wrestling performed by people who have beauty pageants for goats with some Japanese Judo and Russian Red Army hand to hand combat. The end result is a no-holds-barred discipline designed to take your enemy down and keep them from ever getting up again.

Sambo lacks any of the elegance of normal martial arts. Most Sambo videos you find look like a bare knuckles back alley boxing match was interrupted by a wrestling coach.

Sambo teaches you how to avoid injury while getting the other person on the ground and immobilizing them – fast. Attacking a Sambo practitioner with a knife is a good way to get your own throat cut. Not that they’d need to. With practice, it’s frighteningly easy for someone skilled at Sambo to take you down and humiliatingly tap all the dangerous weak parts of your body as a reminder that they could kill you at their leisure.

Much like karate and other martial arts, Sambo has a hierarchy of levels ranging from Novice (also known as the people thrown around like rag dolls during demonstrations) to Distinguished Grand Master (the deceptively bored looking elderly men sporting giant mustaches and pot bellies who can take a knife off a 20 year old, press the flat of the blade against his throat, and drop some cigarette ash in his eye all in under 10 seconds.)

If you’re looking for a deadly discipline, Sambo is a good choice for people with bad backs and strong legs. You don’t need to be gracefully limber, but you do need to be comfortable wrapping your legs around an attacker’s torso while you take them down.

Silat

Honor and fairness are for people who aren’t busy fighting for their lives. Silat is Malaysia’s ongoing response to countless waves of invaders. Unlike karate or tae kwon do, there’s no pretense at it having a spiritual side. The Malaysians paid close attention to every wave of invaders, adopting the most useful parts of all their fighting techniques until they ended up with Silat.

Both Malaysian and Indonesian soldiers were taught Silat for centuries. If someone attacks you, the goal is to close the distance fast, keep them off their guard, and take them down before they can muster a defense. When they’re down, then you brutally kick them in the face, throat or ribs so they don’t get back up again.

There isn’t as much kicking or joint work as Muay Thai. The key to success with Silat isn’t beating your opponent until they fall over. Instead, it’s getting them down fast then delivering a killing blow before they can call for help. There’s no shame in attacking from behind or stabbing someone in the back.

Since it was a functional part of war for centuries, training also included pain tolerance techniques. Unlike Sambo or Muay Thai, Silat training includes use of a dagger. Considering how much Sambo practitioners pride themselves on their ability to disarm an attacker, it would be very interesting to see a fight between people trained in Sambo and Silat.

Silat is best for younger people with good reflexes, well oiled joints, and few preexisting aches or pains.

EMERGENCY TECHNIQUES

There are a few easy household objects you can use to defend yourself in nearly any situation. A rock or a lock are a great weapons which make you appear unarmed. The rest are good emergency techniques to help tide you over until you can take a real self defense class.

Rock in a Sock

Your great grandfather knew to fear a bully with a rock in a sock. It doesn't sound like much these days, but you can easily use it to beat someone to death. The sock gives you both range (keeping them further from your body) and velocity (increasing the strength of your hit). Swing for the head, kidneys, gut, hands, and feet. Take the other person down and run for the safety of your friends or your gun.

Lock on a Rope

A basic gym padlock or combination lock can be an incredible weapon. You can slide a rope through the lock's mouth or, to save space in your pockets, simply tie it to some women's tights. What you want is range and velocity. With a rope or a pair of tights, you can use that vicious lock to beat down on someone more than 3 feet away. It's small, dense, and delivers an incredibly painful blow. There's nothing suspicious about carrying around a gym locker. For a woman, there's nothing suspicious about having some tights in your purse. Use them to your stealthy, self defense advantage.

Bike Helmet

Bicycles are a fantastic and often overlooked post-crisis form of efficient transportation. What people easily overlook is the helmet. If you fall off your bike, the helmet is designed to take an incredible amount of force. Remember that if you need to headbutt someone. You can seriously hurt them if you're wearing a bike helmet. If your helmet is off, that pointy end can do serious damage to someone's gut or face.

Dumbells

If someone breaks into your house and you have Russian Kettlebells, you’re golden. The handle at one end and heavy weight at the other make them easy to wield at arm’s length. Don’t ignore your standard dumbbells, though. Grab a weight you’re comfortable holding – as little as five pounds will do – and use it to add power and force to your punches. Holding a small dumbbell can give a roundhouse or uppercut lethal force.

Bottles

Pay attention - DO NOT try to break a full glass bottle over someone’s head. You’ll most likely shatter the narrower end in your hand and give yourself a severe injury while your opponent stands and laughs. Instead, grab an empty bottle and smash that on something hard, like your sink or the edge of a table. You now have a multi bladed knife with a convenient handle. It’s a fragile knife, though, so go for soft, vulnerable places where you can do a lot of damage. If your attacker raises their arms, stab for the armpit. If you’re on the ground, go for the back of the thigh and try to hamstring them or the back of the ankle and attack the Achilles tendon.

Hammers

A hammer is another one of those deceptive weapons. In case of a crisis, go ahead and tuck one into your belt so you'll have it with you at all times. You have a comfortable handle built in at one end. At the other, you have one side which can inflict small, focused blunt force trauma and the other side which can dig in and rip up flesh.

Hammers are great for attacking someone’s joints. It’s surprisingly easy to shatter a person’s knee with a hammer. A good blow to the elbow can turn your attacker's arm into a useless, limp source of searing pain. Hammers are also notoriously good for cracking skulls.

The prying end of a hammer can dig in between ribs. Use the same leverage you’d use to remove a nail to break the rib up and outwards. A person armed with a hammer is a person well equipped to survive any close-range attack.

BEST BODY PARTS TO ATTACK

Whether you're totally unarmed or are sporting a rock, lock or hammer, don't waste your time pounding on someone's arms or thighs. Instead, go for the most vulnerable parts of their body. Remember, if you're in a position where you're unarmed, untrained, and under attack, your number one goal is to get to safety. You can come back for the attacker later. First, you need to survive.

Temple

Your temples are little bundles of nerves and major blood vessels. The right blow – especially with a boot – and you can knock someone senseless.

Nasion

This is the classic cartilage blow to the brain. If you’re in a life or death situation, try to avoid crushing the naison with a brick or baseball bat. That’ll leave a nasty scar, but they’ll heal. You want to keep it whole and drive it up into the brain for instant lethal damage. Use the flat of your palm or the base of a baseball bat. If you can't drive it up into their brain, you can at least break their nose and cause serious pain.

Philtrum

This thin flap of skin between the top of your upper lip and the bottom of your nose is full of all kinds of dangerous nerve endings. You can actually kill yourself by sneezing too hard and pinching here. Imagine what you can do with a well placed kick or a hard, fast elbow slam.

Hook to the Jaw

If you’re strong enough, a powerful blow to the front of the jaw can snap a person’s neck, killing them instantly. There’s a reason that in boxing, this punch is sometimes called The Widowmaker. If you're not particularly strong, you're more likely to hurt both your hand and their jaw.

Adam’s Apple

A sharp, hard blow to the Adam’s Apple can crush the windpipe, making it difficult or impossible for your attacker to breathe.

Small of Back

A solid kick or power drive with the elbow can cause instant spinal damage, possibly disabling your attacker for life.

Cerebellum Base

At the other end of the spine, a hard, fast blow just below the skull can knock it off the spine, causing instant damage and possibly death.

Testicles

Does it need to be said? Hit a man where it truly hurts. Worst case this will bring him to his knees. Now that you have him the down on the ground, you can do a world of other damage.

Brain Buster

If you’re fighting outdoors on concrete or gravel, pull your attacker towards you. Now grab their belt or the loops of their jeans. Use your leverage to haul them into the air. Fall backwards onto your back. This should result in them literally going heels up and slamming their head into the concrete. Gravity and the combined weight of both your bodies will do serious, potentially fatal damage to both their head and neck.

Abdomen

Pummel someone in the guts hard enough and eventually you’ll damage some organs to the point of failure.

Rib Cage

If you're wearing steel toed boots, a good kick to the ribs can be incredibly effective. Damaging the ribs can not only cause pain, but also potentially puncture a lung or other organ, leading to fatal complications. This is exactly why Krav Maga is designed to keep you from being kicked to death.

Head Wrench

This is one of those rare movie actions which can actually work when done right. It’s not as easy as Hollywood makes it look, but you can grab someone by both sides of the head and turn fast and sharp, snapping their spine and killing them instantly.

Choke Hold

Wrap your right arm over their right shoulder. Wrap your left arm over their left shoulder then reach across their neck and grab your right arm. If you apply enough pressure, you can break the windpipe and crush their neck.

Ears

In rare cases, simultaneously clapping both hands hard over a person’s ears can rupture their eardrums and lead to death. Most of the time it will merely disorient them.

Eyes

The classic Three Stooges maneuver works. Point your fingers in a V and poke into a person’s eyes. You might drive them away, you might blind them, and if you do it with enough force, you might hit the optic nerve and kill them from shock. Most likely, you'll cause damage to the eye which will disorient them enough for you to get away.

CONCLUSION

Pick one of the self defense classes that most appeals to you and sign up today. You won't regret it. Whether you're an older person with bad joints who takes Sambo, a middle aged person with both parents and children to protect who takes Krav Maga, or a healthy gym rat who takes MCMAP, you will sleep easier knowing you are capable of taking down an armed attacker without killing them.

While you train, you'll make friends, learn new skills, and get in great physical shape. Instead of doom and gloom, survival and self defense training is actually a lot of fun and a great chance to engage in community building. You owe it to yourself to be just as secure when armed and unarmed. Plus, it's a great way to make friends.

OTHER PREP SCHOOL LESSONS

If you liked this Prep School lesson then check out some of our other titles.

Prep School: Cooking Without Electricity

Prep School: Preserving Meat Without Power

Prep School: Hiding Guns 101

Prep School: Prepping for your Period

Stay tuned for upcoming Prep School lessons including:

Solar Power for Your Home

Urban Ranching: From Bunnies to Bees

Everybody Poops

Have fun staying safe!