If it happened
Here we have an interesting little snippet describing a minor assault that occurred on a Tokyo subway train:
"I was recently the victim of a Random Act of Violence.
To set the scene: I was traveling home in the sardine can known as the Odakyu line on a weeknight around 9:30pm. The Commuter in the seat next to the door had decided that getting a seat wasn’t enough—he also wanted the metal railing next to the seat as his elbow rest. When I entered the train, I was jostled and pushed, and eventually settled into the space by the door, my back to both the metal hand railing and the Commuter with the well-rested elbow. Unfortunately, my position meant that my rear end intruded upon his elbow rest space.
The Commuter expressed his dissatisfaction with a few vicious elbow jabs throughout our 15 minute train ride. I was completely unable to move away, or to communicate with him due to my squished, immobile position. When the train came to his stop, he gave me two particularly vicious final jabs before standing up to get off the train. As he passed me, he pulled back, punched me in the face, and quickly exited.
Needless to say, everyone was rather surprised. The other commuters around me were torn between shock, intense curiosity, and valiant attempts at pretending that they hadn’t seen anything. Only one man dared acknowledge the incident by digging into his wallet and thoughtfully (albeit impractically) offering me two rather old band-aids for my then-bloodied nose.
As for me, I stood with my mouth agape. A couple of elbow jabs in the butt was one thing—but a punch in the face?"
Anybody interested in combative arts should be constantly scanning for this kind of incident report, to check yourself - what would you do if it happened to you? Or more precisely, how to avoid having it happen to you. The downside is that these short textual accuonts never give anywhere near the detail we'd need to really understand what options were available to the victim guy - before, during, and after. But that's life, it's still worth anaylyzing for what you can get from it.
In the above case it seems that this guy was the victim of an absolute sucker punch surprise blitz attack and that no defense or pre-emption would have been possible. But is it really so? See how the Attacker guy was elbow jabbing Victim guy for some minutes prior. There's your Red Flag right there. Soon as something like that happens, the jabber has a big gold star on his forehead as far as I'm concerned, he is now a loose cannon on deck and a potential threat. Therefore I'd either move away or if not possible then at least track the guy's movement carefully and make all required adjustments in my own posture to deal with any kind of surprise incoming contact from him.
Rarely does something come totally from the blue. But it could happen.
Anyway to defend against anybody all we can do is attempt to affect one or more of the following attributes of the attacker(s):
- Vision
- Consciousness
- Breathing
- Balance
- Structure
Apart some peripheral exotica, that's all there is to work on, just those Five. First move is directed primarly to affect one of the above five, but if it is going to be effective it needs to entail or influence the other four as a natural consequence. Here's the list again with some examples:
Anyway for more examples of armchair scenarios to ponder, of course there are many crime/assault new websites, but for more extreme and challenging cases I highly recommend reading The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer by Philip Carlo. My full Amazon review is here. That book contains numerous detailed accounts of specific actual criminal assaults with deadly intent initiated by a professional. Some people don't believe this guy's account of his own misdeeds, but to me the book is invaluable as a source of ideas nonetheless.
