I live in the country outside of a small town. We have about a 10 minute drive on a highway to get into town. Most of the trip is 70 miles an hour. There are several roads that run off this highway and so many vehicles want to pull out and merge onto this highway. I have watched the process many times. I will be going along at 70 MPH and I can see a car that wants to pull out. They will stop and about 2 to 4 seconds later they will pull out. They have to look at the traffic coming their way and evaluate. By the time they process what they are seeing, I am a lot closer because of speed.
I just read about a police officer shooting an attacker in the back. But when they looked at body cam footage, it was clear that the attacker had shot at the officer. So why did he shoot him in the back? It’s all about timing. This happens more often than anyone realizes. What happens is that the attacker turns and the defender doesn’t realize it. In short, reality isn’t what you see, and you have walked around your entire life consciously SEEING a reality that happened a quarter, half, or even 3/4 of a second ago. You don’t realize it normally, but everyone has memories of times where this came into play. Ever hear someone who got into a vehicle accident say “I never even saw it coming!” With driving, the visual perception delay and reactionary gap is generally accepted to be 2 seconds. This is why drivers are always told to stay at least 2 seconds behind the car in front of them to be able to consciously identify and react to danger.
Typical movies are shot at 24 frames per second. They look pretty smooth. Fighter pilots who are trained can identify aircraft in only 1/200th of second. But they still have to process what they see and react. This takes them about ¼ of a second
When we look around, it looks like everything is moving fluidly, but we really see in frames…kind of like a movie.
The frame rate that you see at is dependent on light, the colors you’re observing at the time, cognitive load/stress, and your specific neurology.
The simple fact is, good people DO justifiably shoot attackers in the back after they’ve stopped attacking and started to run away.
Because of the fact that there’s a quarter to three-quarter second delay between what our eyes see and what the conscious mind is able to process.
During that 1/4-3/4 second delay, the attacker has plenty of time to drop their weapon, turn, and depending on the situation, start moving away…all the while, the shooter is seeing what happened earlier—which was the attacker facing them and posing a threat.
If you’re firing off shots with quarter second splits, then you could feasibly shoot your attacker once in the side and a time or two in the back without even realizing that they were no longer a threat.
In fact, visual perception delay is a criminal defense tool that can help in cases where 1-2 shots are fired into the back of someone who WAS a threat. 3 would be questionable, but 4 would be incredibly difficult because by that time, the fact that your attacker is no longer a threat should have made it to your conscious mind.
This is where the OODA loop is important to understand. Very basically it is this:
The OODA Loop — Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Nation-states around the world and even terrorist organizations use the OODA Loop as part of their military strategy. It has also been adopted by businesses to help them thrive in a volatile and highly competitive economy.
The OODA Loop is an oft-cited, but typically misunderstood idea. If you’ve heard of it, it was most likely presented in a fairly superficial way – as a 4-step decision-making process where the individual or group who makes it through all the stages the quickest, wins. Or getting “inside” your opponents loop with throw them off so that you can strike. This is all true, but there is more to it all than this brief explanation. This is why training is so important and situational awareness makes the difference in defense and using that ¼ of second you may gain on your attacker. Knowing these things can help you train better and be better prepared for any defensive event you experience.
This situational awareness information is important to help you plan your training program or in teaching this to others.
Semper Paratus
Check 6
Burn
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