Awareness Drill - Maps #1

This drill will take about 20 minutes. It doesn't cost anything, and will require only a pen and paper.

From a place that you spend a lot of time in, spend 10 minutes draw a map of your immediate surroundings. If you are at work (where most of us spend much of our days), try to map your floor. If you are outside, try to draw a map a hundred yards square, or a small neighborhood block.

When drawing your map, pay specific attention to safety. If you are indoors, where are the nearest exits? If you are in a restaurant, would it be through the kitchen? Do the restrooms have windows? Are you sitting next to a large plate glass window?



A few scenarios to help you:

1) (for indoors) - A shooter comes in off the street. Where are your exits? If the nearest exit is a window, what is nearby to break it? If you are on a floor higher than ground, is this even a possible route of egress? What would you need to do to leave the building safely in this manner? How long would it take to prepare? How noisy would it be?

2) (For indoors) - A person who is already inside the building suddenly becomes a shooter. Maybe it's a restaurant patron sitting near you, maybe a frustrated coworker. What routes do you have to get away? If you are in a larger building with corridors, what routes give you more options? Visibility?

3) (For indoors) - Where are good places to hide? Are there rooms or areas that are lockable from the inside? The building I am in now has many rooms that are lockable - but each one has a large decorative glass panel next to it that is easily broken and that anyone could walk through with little difficulty. Does that necessarily make it a bad place to hide?

4) (For outdoors) - where is the nearest very public place? If you had to attract a lot of attention, where would you go?

5) For anywhere - What is around you that can stop bullets? Or a determined follower? Where could you quickly lose someone who was chasing you?

Take about 10 minutes to draw your map. When you are finished, take another 10 minutes to walk around the area and see what you've missed. Forgot about a chain-link fence? Were there stairs that you didn't account for? A secure room that you missed? It's enlightening what you can miss about a place you spend 1/3 of your life in each and every day.