You have just been kidnapped in a foreign city, what do you do?

tmount

tmount

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A couple days ago I read an [old] post by Tim Ferriss on how to be Jason Bourne: Multiple Passports, Swiss Banking, and Crossing Borders. Who wouldn’t want to be Jason Bourne? I mean, aside from people hunting and wanting to kill him.

The post was centered around Neil Strauss’ Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life
(full disclosure, this is an Amazon affiliate link), a book which I own. I can’t say that I endorse all that he writes, however the section that resonated with me, both in the book, and in Tim’s post, was a reference to OnPoint Tactical’s Urban Escape and Evasion.


Graphic from OnPoint Tactical.


First, OnPoint Tactical trainers are trained in a variety of tactics and have experience in places like Iraq.

The class is geared toward international travelers going places where bad things might happen. I travel where bad things might happen (Heck, I’ll be in Cairo next week!), so naturally, I was interested enough to check out the website.

The topics they cover include:

  • Covert movement (day vs. night)
  • the judicious use of caches
  • understanding urbane baseline movement and urban awareness training
  • the use of disguises and false papers/identification
  • lock picking
  • escpaping from unlawful custody
  • obtaining and driving local transportation
  • the use of “specialized urban gear
  • instruction on how to develop urban escape and evasion go-bags
For a three day course, that is a lot of material. They further describe the schedule as 2 days of 11 hour “classroom” time, and what I would call a “capstone” exercise on day 3, that puts the lectures into practice.


OnPoint Tactical Urban Escape and Evasion


They describe the capstone as:


You will be “kidnapped”: hooded, cuffed and taken somewhere dark and uncomfortable to start your day. You will be expected to escape, find your own transportation legally using your social engineering skills, and make your way to the first cache location, where directions for a series of tasks using all your new skills await.Meanwhile, expert trackers will be hunting you down, and if they catch you, you will have to start again from a more distant location.
​

In all candor – it sounds like a pretty exhaustive 3 day course. The cost is $799, but they offer a 7% discount if you pay two weeks in advance. It’s too steep for me, even though I’m quite tempted… with some of the places I will be traveling. Given the fact that I was in Bangkok when the Thai military first declared martial law and then a full out coup d’etat, I kind’ve feel like maybe this sort of training would be useful. But hey, I just travel for fun and adventure (preferably from seat 1K).

What do you think? Would you take a course in Urban Escape and Evasion?

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