If you’ve never been in an active shooter incident or had active shooter survival training, you may wonder how to respond if ever faced with an assailant who is intent on hurting and/or killing as many people as they can. To help answer this question, the FBI offers a free training video titled ‘Run. Hide. Fight.’
This video is under five minutes in length and offers advice about how to respond to an active shooter incident. In this case, the scenario is that you are in a bar, a fight starts, and gunfire erupts around you. It then goes through a three-step response, which is to run if you can, hide if you can’t get away, and fight if you are approached by the suspect, choosing your survival over theirs.
Other important advice is offered in this short video, such as listening to law enforcement’s commands when they arrive on the scene and considering windows as exits as well as doors. A.L.I.V.E. Active Shooter Survival Training courses follow a similar protocol, which is why we like to refer to them as ‘Run. Hide. Fight. 2.0.’
A.L.I.V.E. Active Shooter Survival Training – Run. Hide. Fight. 2.0
A.L.I.V.E. Active Shooter Survival courses expand on the FBI’s three-step response by adding two additional steps: assess and expose. The “A” in A.L.I.V.E. stands for assess. This involves not only evaluating the scene quickly once an active shooter incident starts, but also being actively aware of your surroundings at all times – even before trouble begins.
The “L” stands for leave, which is similar to the FBI’s urge to run if you can. “I” stands for impede, which involves putting some type of barrier between you and the shooter, such as by hiding behind cover. “V” stands for violence, another word for fighting if you need.
The fifth letter in the A.L.I.V.E. Active Shooter Survival training program is “E,” which stands for expose. In the course, we go through how to safely expose your location to law enforcement once they have arrived.
A Comprehensive Active Shooter Survival Training Course
The FBI’s ‘Run. Hide. Fight.’ video is a great start for learning basic actions to take in a mass shooting incident. But we also urge you to go beyond this five-minute video and take a more comprehensive training course, giving yourself, your family, and others around you an even better chance of survival if you ever find yourself near an active shooter .A.L.I.V.E. offers active shooter survival training in locations throughout the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and Australia. You can also sign up for our online active shooter training, with several course options from which to choose. Do it today because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. And if tomorrow does bring an active shooter, at least you will be prepared.
