Prepping is all about being prepared for whatever might happen. A prepper does everything possible to be prepared for whatever lies just around the corner. Anticipation is one thing but how likely is it actually to happen? For that, a prepper needs to develop some personal skills that keep certain senses constantly switched on and alert.
Those skills include powers of observation that develop a keen spatial awareness. And a spatial awareness that, through assessment and evaluation, becomes in turn a situational awareness – an awareness of how, and in which of many potential directions, any situation is likely to develop.
Alert to your powers of observation and spatial awareness, you can begin to develop the situational awareness that gives you the confidence in maintaining those four essential pillars of personal safety and security we discussed at some length in our posting on the 26th of April.
Observation
Unless you keep your eyes open, of course, you’re not going to see what’s going on around you. But observing is about a lot more – and takes rather more skill – than simply looking or watching. You need to learn what it is you are looking out for.
Staying alert means permanently scanning your horizons and immediate environment – but it’s vital to know what’s likely to be important and what’s not. That’s the only way you can begin to sort out what’s important and what’s not – whether you are paying attention to the right things. Whether you are paying attention to people and situations which might, sooner or later, pose a threat to you and your loved ones.
Spatial awareness
So, effective observation is not simply a question of keeping your eyes open but consciously registering what it is you are taking in.
By registering the lie of the land, the location of inanimate objects, and the appearance, body language, and behaviours of people, you begin to develop a spatial awareness – an awareness and consciousness of what is happening around you. This helps you to identify potential risks – and the realisation that they can materialise from practically any direction.
You could also describe that sense of spatial awareness as the way in which you orient yourself in any situation. This is the term chosen in an article that appeared on the Art of Manliness website on the 19th of May 2021, when the author spoke about it being the second step in a constant loop of observation, orientation, decision-making, and action.
Spatial awareness, then, becomes the second phase – after observation – which leads to the necessary decision-making and action you may need to take in any given situation.
Through that series of steps, observation and spatial awareness lead us on to situational awareness.
Situational awareness
Situational awareness is not some special strategy reserved only for those facing dangerous or threatening circumstances. You might be surprised by the number of scenarios in which situational awareness plays a critical part.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), for example, has talked about the ability of situational awareness providing a “helicopter view” to help formulate a consciousness of what is going on around us.
Gaining that situational awareness is firstly a question of perception and attention – the process of observation that we’ve already identified. Comprehension and understanding of the risks, opportunities, and threats inherent in any situation then come through an assessment or interpretation of what you have observed.
Only when you have developed the necessary situational awareness – or helicopter view – and conducted your assessment based on that vision can you develop a realistic model of the environment you are in and base your decisions on your understanding of that situation and environment.
The four pillars
And that brings us full circle to the principles governing the way in which we build and maintain our personal safety and security – those famous four pillars we identified in previously.
You’ll recall that these pillars – observation, escape, the barriers we build, or the ways in which we engage with threats and dangers – outline the options we are likely to have and our ability to observe and assess any situation before deciding whether to escape any menace to our personal safety, erect barriers and defences against those dangers, or consciously engage with the threat or threats facing us.
Situational awareness is achieved by constantly updating our understanding of everything that is happening around us. It is a continuously playing loop that involves observation and spatial awareness, followed by an assessment of what our informed senses are telling us about the people and things in our immediate environment – and the potential direction from which specific dangers and threats may come.
