Seal Survival Guide

by Cade Courtley

  1. CHANGE YOUR ROUTINE

  If you always leave your house or apartment at eight A.M., for example, leave earlier or later. Enter a highway at a different exit, or take a different road or street to the store you usually go to. There are many ways to alter your routine without changing your life. But this will make you an unpredictable target, and those looking for an easy mark will likely look for another victim.

  2. LOSE YOUR EYES: SURVEILLANCE DETECTION ROUTE (SDR)

  If you want to determine if someone is actually following you, there are a number of ways to do so. If you suspect someone is trailing your car, make a series of right or left turns, or box around a particular area until you return to the same spot. No casual driver would still be behind you at this point. Do the same thing if on foot in a city. If you do this effectively, you could even have the person who is following you now in front of you. You can wave or take their picture. At any rate, you have won by letting them know that you see them.

  3. SET UP AN AMBUSH

  If those following seem to be more sinister, such as a group of men in a car, you can lead them into a trap. Once you have determined that you’re being followed, you can feign that you are still unaware. Use your survival skill of remaining calm under pressure. Continue your route, but call the police and inform them of the situation. You can describe the car or person in detail and coordinate with the police to lead the potential attackers to a specific location.

  TORTURE AND BEING HELD HOSTAGE

  Torture is any method or means used to inflict extreme pain and suffering for the purposes of punishment, to extract information, or to intimidate a person into total submission. In reality, it’s an attempt to kill a person without their dying, through bringing them to the brink of death. The history of torture and the list of devices used to inflict hurt is long; it shows how perversely inventive humankind can be when it comes to devising methods to inflict pain. Torture can be either mental or physical abuse. There are techniques to help you endure it and come out alive, if you should ever find yourself in such a situation. (See also “Tiger Kidnapping,” page 187, and “Trouble in a Foreign Country,” page 286.) It will test every aspect of your SEAL survival mindset to make it through the torture alive. To survive, you will have to notch up your mental toughness to levels you never thought possible—but it can be done.

  One civilian, British consultant Peter Moore, survived an incredible 947 days of continual torture in Iraq. Upon his release, he said he endured by telling himself he would not grovel or beg his captors to spare his life. Instead, he focused on pleasant boyhood memories during the ordeal to help him cope. He counted each escape from death as a little victory and survived.

  Torture’s Many Forms

  It could be argued that the psychological aspect of torture is far more damaging than the specific acts. It’s not only being captured and imprisoned or bound but the terror and fear that arises in anticipation of when the next session will begin that creates extreme stress and trauma. In modern times, torture is still widely employed throughout the world. Here are some methods used:

  • Environmental manipulation: Sleep deprivation, isolation, sensory deprivation, and noise abuse.

  • Pharmacological manipulation: The use of hallucinatory or muscle-paralyzing drugs.

  • Coercive methods: Being forced to watch the torture of friends and/or family.

  • Somatic methods: This is any manner of physical abuse, such as beatings, burning with cigarettes, electric shock treatments, rape, or starvation.

  • Suffocation: This includes waterboarding and having your head forced into a bucket or container filled with excrement or placed inside an airtight bag.

  • Psychological methods: This includes mock executions, such as firing at your head a pistol that is perhaps filled with blanks.

  Waterboarding is a torture technique used since the Middle Ages. A person is strapped to a board, inclined with the feet raised and the head lowered. The head may be wrapped with cellophane at the forehead and chin or bound in some way. Waves of water are poured on the face and inevitably get in the nose and mouth, which produces the sensation of drowning.

  Why Me?

  Although the reasons vary, it will become immediately apparent why you happened to have been chosen as a target for torture. You could have a job that gives you access to large amounts of money or to classified and sensitive information. It could be due to your ethnicity or religion if you are in a foreign country. Or you could simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as during a home invasion or even a carjacking. Regardless of the reason, you are now in a situation that will require the greatest degree of physical and mental toughness. Prepare for your comfort zone to be radically challenged.

  Accepting Your Situation

  Once you have been captured and are controlled by the abductors, it is best not to get too far ahead by imagining what might happen next. In fact, if you accept the present situation, you can then work on making yourself calm. You will need your mind to be in this state to think clearly and look for an opportunity to escape. The goal is to begin working on a survival plan by observing every detail of your situation and the environmental factors in which you find yourself.

  Stress Management

  Immediately start your combat breathing technique. If you allow yourself to panic, you won’t be able to logically address the situation. You need to keep a focused mind and accept that you will probably be beaten and possibly tortured.

  Time

  This is the one and only element in a torture scenario that your captors have no control over. They can’t stop time. So if they can’t control this, you must embrace it. This is also your best friend. The longer you are able to stay alive, the greater the chance that you will be rescued or set free. Again think about little victories: That punch didn’t hurt as much as the last one. He must be getting tired because he’s starting to sweat from hitting me. Well, I still have two teeth left. I was begging to die five minutes ago but I’m still here.

  Create a ticking clock in your head and constantly say to yourself, “I just survived another second [minute, hour, day].” Do whatever you can to gain time. This may all sound very disturbing, but given the gravity of a torture scenario, you may have only these little victories to cling to.

  Escape

  Always plan to escape; this is what will keep you alive and able to endure. Make your mental movie of how you will do this. This will also give your mind a positive thing to work on, help you stay numb, and hopefully serve you well. Your captors may see a curled-up, bloody, semiconscious individual strapped to a chair. But the entire time your brain is at work, looking for that window of opportunity to crack and allow you to flee.

  Become the Gray Man

  In a torture situation, the captors want to prove immediately that they have total dominance and complete control over your fate. It’s all about proving that they have the power of determining whether you will live or not. Your goal is to appear as calm and submissive as possible. If, for example, you were abducted in a foreign country, you want to give the impression that you are a face in the crowd and a person of no value. Become the gray man, a term used in intelligence circles that refers to a person who blends into any scene or situation without drawing attention while concealing his survival knowledge and skills. You want to de-escalate this situation by appearing compliant. The worst move at this point would be to aggressively resist. This will only increase the abuse. The more personable and calm you are, the greater the possibility you have of establishing communication with your assailants. It is ideal to attempt to humanize the attackers, such as calling them by name. Again, your goal at this point is to make it to the next minute.

  Managing the Pain

  This will probably be the worst thing you have ever experienced. Stay strong! You need to dig deep and pull out the maximum mental and physical toughness that you can muster. You must tell yourself that there is nothing they can do that will make you forf
eit the will to live. Strategies to employ include:

  • Check out. Put your brain in neutral and conjure up that mental vacation. Imagine you are floating in a warm ocean or sitting on the side of a mountain, or whatever place offers you interior peace. This is not the time to conjure the image you created in “Creating a Trigger,” which will only make enduring the suffering more unbearable. This is not the time for your trigger; this is the time for complete numbness.

  • Guard your eyes. Your captors are monitoring your reactions to the first round of torture very closely. They want to find your “fear buttons,” so they know how and where to press harder. You must remember that our eyes are often giveaways as to how we are really feeling, so make a tremendous effort to present a face of neutrality. If they find anything that can be used to turn you, they will use it.

  • Exaggerate. If you find that maintaining neutrality and trying not to let the pain show in your eyes has been ineffective, you could instead try to overplay and exaggerate effect the physical abuse is having on you. Make it seem as if you are injured more than you really are. For example, it’s okay to moan, groan, and even scream with pain at the slightest touch. This will make them think you have a low threshold for pain and could make them hold back from using greater force. It could also gain you more time and get them to bring you water or food, since at this point they don’t want you to die, or they would have already killed you.

  • Let it go. Urinate, defecate, and vomit on yourself. Your captors will be less likely to physically harm you if they don’t want to touch you or even be in the same room with you.

  I remember about the third day of being cooped up in my three-foot-by-three-foot luxury concrete box in SERE school, when I was really starting to go stir-crazy. I literally couldn’t wait for the interrogations to begin. I said to myself, “Please hit me, you assholes, so at least I’ll feel something.” Well, it wasn’t long before my wish was granted, and I was soon more than ready to get back to my box. This goes under the “be careful what you wish for” column.

  Give Something vs. Give Nothing

  In many instances you are being subjected to torture for information. They want something from you or they wouldn’t be wasting their time. If you give them no information, nothing at all, then you could be considered unbreakable or dispensable, which in this scenario means that they might as well kill you and be done with it. While under torture, it is difficult to make a decision about how much or how little you should talk or what questions you should answer. You must decide what’s best based on the specific situation and the captors you are up against.

  • Do you give little pieces of information in an effort to prolong the time?

  • Do you continue to give nothing?

  Giving some information or even the wrong information may have a positive effect in prolonging the time and decreasing the abuse. However, the captors may believe that more torture will produce more information. On the other hand, if you are giving no information, the captors could very well lose patience and kill you. This is one of the lessons we were taught during SERE and is a choice that can be made only based on the particular circumstances of your abduction and torture.

  TROUBLE IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY

  Travel to a foreign country, whether for business or pleasure, can be an amazing experience. But you should understand first and foremost that as soon as you leave the United States, you are also leaving the rights, laws, customs, language, and culture of America. Do not assume you will be afforded any special privileges because you come from the United States. Quite the opposite—as an American you may be drawing attention to yourself simply because of your nationality. (Many college-age Americans put Canadian flags on backpacks while traveling in Europe to avoid being picked out as an American.) So, when traveling abroad, please don’t be the “ugly American.” Respect and appreciate that you are a visitor in a foreign land, and you will lessen the vast majority of problems you may encounter.

  In the 1990s, when American troops went to Somalia on a humanitarian aid operation, a one-hour local-culture briefing could have saved the lives of many U.S. soldiers. When our troops flew around in helicopters over the local population, they had their legs hanging out, which is a normal way we sometimes traveled when crammed into these things. We had no idea that in Somalian culture, showing the bottom of your feet is the same as flipping someone the bird in the States. It also would have been good to know that a large portion of the population indulges in a drug called khat, pronounced “cot,” which is a highly addictive drug categorized as a stimulant that creates feelings of euphoria. They primarily do this drug in the day, so that when night comes, most of these folks are zoned out and sound asleep. Yep, we stirred a hornet’s nest with day raids against a city of fighters that would have been otherwise out of commission in the evening—but then again, war is imperfect.

  Before You Go

  • Know the culture, laws, and customs of the country you will visit; that which is considered acceptable in the United States may be horribly offensive in other countries. Also know some of the language, at least a few key phrases to help you ask for directions, for example. Usually making an effort to speak some of the native tongue will get people to act more hospitable toward you.

  • Make sure people at home know your travel plans. Write down flight numbers, hotels where you’ll be staying, and contact numbers, if possible. Also include the names, and the stateside contact information, of all persons traveling with you. In addition, provide the number for the Office of American Citizens Services division of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. If you get in trouble or lose your passport, for example, calls made by relatives in the States could help to expedite your situation while you are abroad.

  Carry a pictogram guide for the area you’re visiting. This will allow you to communicate visually. Learning key phrases such as “Where is the embassy?” and “Can you help me, please?” could be invaluable in any number of situations. In the SEAL team, key phrases we learned before we went to battle in a foreign country included “Drop to your knees! Get down! Hands up!” and “I’m going to shoot you if you don’t.” We also we found it very useful to have picture cards displaying an IED, an ambush, and a small American flag used to help us interrogate and communicate. Additionally, a one-hundred-dollar bill was universally accepted and overcame all sorts of language barriers.

  • Scan a color copy of your passport and attach it to an e-mail, but don’t send it. It will remain in your “drafts” box, which can be accessed by you at any time should you need to produce a copy. Additionally, bring a certified copy of your birth certificate. Write down your passport number and bring duplicate passport photos, in the event your passport is lost and you need to get a temporary one from the U.S. embassy. Keep this info separated from your cash, in the event you are subjected to theft.

  • Make sure you know the location, address, and phone number of the American embassy or consulate, and those of at least three ally nations. Study a map of the country and make note of significant landmarks. Especially include waterways and borderlines, so that you know the direction of “friendly” nations and how to avoid entering countries that are less hospitable.

  • Most embassies are open only during business hours, but you may need assistance at any time. Get twenty-four-hour emergency phone numbers for the U.S. State Department. These should be obtained before you leave, but you may find the numbers in local phone directories or at airports.

  • Additionally, you can also get numbers of private companies specializing in risk management while abroad, or those that offer chartered-flight extraction services in the event of disasters.

  FRIENDLIES

  Among the top ten American-loving countries are the Ivory Coast, Kenya (and many sub-Saharan African nations), Israel, Poland, Japan, India, Australia, Mexico, Canada, and England. In numerous European countries and throughout the Middle East, for sure, Americans are not usually afforded any special priv
ileges.

  Avoid Trouble

  This is a combination of situational awareness and common sense. At the very least, if it’s trouble in America, it’s probably trouble overseas. An area of town that has “odd-smelling” smoke billowing from its cafés and red-lit windows with partially dressed women dancing behind them might be a hell of a good time for some, but it’s also very dangerous, especially to a foreigner. Remember that since you look, dress, and speak differently, you already are a noticeable target. Stay clear of the danger zones.

  Additionally, it probably wouldn’t hurt to leave the ten-gallon cowboy hat and American-flag sweatshirt in the closet at home. Be the gray man when in a foreign country; enjoy yourself, but try to fly under the radar. Being a low-profile and respectful visitor will not only cause the locals to be more friendly, it will allow you to let your guard down slightly and make for a much more enjoyable vacation.

  In Trouble

  Every country has its own rules concerning foreigners. If you get arrested, there are international treaties in place, which in theory gives permission for embassy officials to communicate with and physically see any of its country’s citizens. Arresting authorities will not automatically notify the embassy, and you must ask for this to be done. Also, keep in mind that even if many foreign countries follow this treaty, not all do. Remember that just because it’s law in America doesn’t mean it’s law where you are. And ignorance will not be an excuse.