With the recent terrorist attack on the Florida club, it is only natural to wonder how you would react if confronted with a similar situation. Looking through our archives, SOFREP has covered ways to survive terrorist attacks or active shooters over the years. Take a look at some of the articles from former special operations forces and military veterans.

4 Ways to Survive a Terrorist Attack

by Wes Kennedy

One of the curious things about people is how quickly, and sometimes how slowly, we learn. In the wake of the Paris attacks and now San Bernardino, it seems people are finally starting to take preparedness a bit more seriously. We can sometimes be a bit harsh on civilians, and honestly, it is often quite funny, but when disaster strikes we all want everyone to be okay. We train for the worst-case scenario all the time, so preparedness is part of the air we breathe; it’s not that way for civilians who only know it through the evening news or their Facebook feed…

Navy SEAL Reveals 10 Steps to Survive a Mass Shooting

by Frumentarius

What the hell is wrong with us? Seriously, what is happening to the fabric of our society? How do we explain the fact that a small fraction of a certain subset of our society—young, often socially isolated males—now find it to be a valid course of action to use a weapon to murder as many people as possible before turning the gun on themselves or perishing in a hail of police bullets? I have no idea. I have no answers.

I do not think “the availability of guns” is the answer, for one, though certainly it is one part of the possible solution. I do not think that the media’s tendency, at least in the past, to pore over and report on the various personality traits and manifestos of past shooters, thus bestowing on them sought-after infamy, is the whole answer, either. It probably plays into the phenomenon, though. A phenomenon I’m afraid isn’t going to end anytime soon, unfortunately…

Surviving a terror attack or mass shooting: the go bag

by Frumentarius

Here in the United States, we have apparently been hit by the old Chinese curse. That is to say, we live in interesting times. The world is fraught with tension and violence, and within our own borders, we are collectively agitated and bewildered by our depressing lack of a coherent and functioning political system. International terrorist groups target weekend revelers across the West, and our own children—usually young men—periodically engage in spasms of violence, in which a deranged shooter kills scores of innocent bystanders, usually before offing himself.

There is no point in arguing how we got here. That is for future sociologists and historians to parse, with the benefit of decades of hard data and hindsight. Our goal in the here and now is simply to manage the day-to-day, to do right by our families, to make the best of the world we inhabit, and if we are lucky enough, to help—even incrementally—to make the world a better place. Part of our job is to simply survive. We have to adapt to the world around us, be cognizant of the threats, and do what we can to mitigate them…

Image courtesy of NBC News