Al Shabab issued an alarming call to arms to lone wolves jihaidst against Westfield shopping malls.
That tells you two things
– they do not have a professional terrorist structure in place (like the USSR in Europe in the 1970s)
-Shopping Malls are soft targets: hard to defend and easy to escape as there are many exit roots.
What can you do about it?
Before the attack.
A lot of interviews from the police to survivors of precedent attack show that almost everyone felt that there was something wrong (the classic sixth sense), but chose to ignore the ancestral sign of peril.
Any attack has to have a “gather information” mission. As these lone wolves are not professional YOU can pick up suspect behaviour. A simple call to the police it is all that is required.
During the attack
First assess where is the threat. In a shopping mall the echoes can play strange games. You could actually inadvertently run towards the danger.
Distinguish concealment from protection. A lot of walls in shopping malls are made of plaster and will not offer protection against bullets. You can use them as temporary concealment or use tables/desks to fortify the position.
Run zigzagging. In most terror attack the shooter shoots at point blank. If you run in a straight line you increase your survival chances by 50%, if you run zigzagging by 70% (contrary to the movies it is extremely hard to shoot a random target – only professionals can try to achieve it)
(Not recommended) Attack. If you just have something like a steel pen, for a non professional the time to reload a gun is between 20 second and 1 minute and it has to look down exposing the neck.
After the attack
Describe in details what you saw to the police (you can even take notes with your mobile) – it could be useful to prevent further attack (often the memory becomes fuzzy after an attack)
A word to you: yes we live in a world of terror…but mostly we live in a world of media.
In the 1970s the KGB/CIA terror networks killed many more people that any extremist terror organization. An interesting statistic is that the cold war (1948/1989), including the Korean, Vietman etc war killed more than the 1 World War.
And apart the 1989 (fall of USSR) and 2001 (9/11 terror attack)period, the Cold War is considered the most peaceful period of human history.
So we are still living in second most peaceful period in human history!
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