Last year I discussed some of the symptoms which come from social, cultural, and political fracturing looking like "war" on the international front and "crime" on the domestic front.
Yet, it seems like this is changing as we move into 2025.
Legendary firearms instructor and special forces veteran John Farnham recently was discussing a concept that he called the ubiquitous or "everywhere battlefield". His main contention was that we as individuals are surrounded by violent activities, regardless of where we go.
And I don't think he's wrong. We are seeing innocent people put in harm's way of contentious international tensions and also with increasingly violent circumstances in the civilian world.
International Violence
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The Council on Foreign Relations’s Global Conflict Tracker identifies 32 conflicts that are currently raging worldwide.
Some of the most contentious and deadly are:
I know that wars are constantly happening throughout the world and have been since the dawn of history. What seems interesting to me is the fallout to us with the involvement of people invested in these conflicts far away from their origin.
We are seeing a ramping up of violent acts during massive protests, both in Europe and the U.S. regarding these conflicts. Particularly I'm thinking about the Israel – Palestine demonstrations. Tactics by demonstrators designed to shut down or hinder traffic, police operations or flights in and out of airports, are seemingly becoming more sophisticated. These will inevitably ramp up to include property damage, fires, and injuries, or deaths of participants or innocent bystanders.
As we saw with the 2020 George Floyd riots, there were numerous examples of innocent citizens being trapped or swept up in the violent aspects of the riots.
Domestic Violence and Self-Defense
The domestic situation seems to be changing which has caught my attention. Our self-defense training is specifically designed at avoiding, evading, and successfully resisting criminal attacks.
Criminal attacks are usually motivated and driven by taking something valuable to be gained by the criminals. Hence, "crime ".
However, now things seem to have changed rapidly where we are being attacked violently with no apparent gain for the criminal:
We can usually expect to hear different sources try to explain the motive of these attacks, yet knowing someone's motive does nothing to stop an attack.
Now we can throw in the growing potential for violence from Hamas-supporters now on college and university campuses.
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Certainty is something that we as humans crave. We constantly search for the 'why' for someone's behavior. It also seems to be something that's involved in a lot of people's thought processes when they are being attacked under that sort of denial where you were asking yourself "why me?, what did I do to deserve this?"
We have to guard against this tendency and focus on training ourselves to look for and recognize suspicious/violent behavior. An attacker's actions speak for themselves.
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Self-Defense Now: What Can I Do to Protect Myself and My Family?
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 Mind shift. We have to realize that we are no longer really "safe" anywhere. Home invasions. Armed robberies. Carjackings. Irrational and violent behaviors from individuals among us. We have to realize that we have moved from a high-trust environment to a low-trust environment.
Safe Zones/Gun Free Zones aren't. Designations, signs, and barriers do not stop the committed attacker. In fact, Gun Free Zones just might be the preferred hunting grounds for domestic terrorists knowing they can chalk up a significant body count.
Stay away from crowds. I know, I'm a buzz-kill for fun. But you don't realize how attractive large crowded venues are for terrorists and those psychotics who want to go down in a blaze of glory. When I was involved with a large governmental events venue, we routinely received intelligence from the fusion center regarding chatter, comments, and plans from various groups and individuals to disrupt or attack the stadium. One in particular that is memorable was intercepted from a well-known terrorist group with plans to attack fans coming out of a stadium with hand grenades. Apparently, this group knew it would be difficult to penetrate the stadium's security protocols, so the easiest thing would be to attack fans as they exited the venue. This appears to be a similar method used in the attack on the Moscow concert hall which killed 137 people and injured 180 more.
The fracturing of our social, cultural, and political institutions will continue. This seems to be accelerating as the American Empire continues it's decline.
And remember, all of this is running parallel to most large cities showing a decline in the ability to respond to emergencies.
Improving our Self-Defense Capabilities
Realize there might not be anyone coming to save you -- you are responsible for your safety
The best weapon is your brain
Learn how to detect dangerous people
Get training
Practice religiously
Test your skills in environments which replicate the real world
Train physically for speed, strength, endurance, and flexibility
Always be improving your equipment and tools
Always be improving your skills
Never quit