If you trained in MMA for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 1 whole year, how good would you be at holding your own in a street fight or the ring?
I actually did exactly this for one year (5 hours a day, 5 days a week) for a year with no prior experience. I mainly focused on boxing and wrestling. BJJ and Muay Thai techniques were secondary in priority. I sparred everyday and power-lifted to get strong, not big. I was 5′8 and weighed 140 pounds (like Bruce Lee) and was able to put up a fight pretty well against any guy that did not train in any martial arts. It was actually surprisingly easy to beat guys who weighed even twice as much as me *as long as they did not have any martial arts, boxing, or wrestling experience.*
I got to test this out in several ways. I sparred with bigger guys who just started doing MMA and beat them. I never competed officially because a guy competing in my weight division would whoop my butt more so than any huge bully meathead could. I would advise you to avoid competitions until you develop some sort of immunity to muay thai kicks and develop some serious wrestling reflexes. That would at least prevent you from losing terribly. You can get seriously hurt with muay thai kicks. There is no way around it either. You must make your shins hard. It will take years to be on par with an opponent. If you don’t have a good grasping of wrestling positioning, you’re set up to lose.
Another way I found out unfortunately, was by having to defend myself on the street a few times. I never hurt anybody seriously, but I have taken down guys who were attacking me. I was so surprised the first time I got atttacked because I didn’t even think the guy would end up on the floor so easily. That gave me time to run for safety. I also submitted another guy & I tried to talk him out of fighting me. I had to run to avoid HURTING HIM (he continued attacking after I let go because his ego couldn’t take the fact that a short skinny guy submitted him). My friends told me that I once beat up a guy who was trying to rob us all at night time. I couldnt remember anything because I was on my insomnia medications but apparently I won by using BASIC boxing and several continuous fast punches. This happened in a sketch neighborhood a few years back. I had a cut on my face, but allegedly, the attackers face was left unsightly. The attacker was allegedly slightly larger than me.
If you spar enough, your reflexes will win the fight for you if the attacker is unarmed & inexperienced. Its just how it works. Just make sure you only use it for self defense. Its hard to know when to switch to combat mode and “stop being civil.” That is actually what is going to determine whether you win or not. For me, seeing a fist coming in my direction or seeing an angry or malicious stare is enough for me to “accept” the situation and abandon those boundaries and be mentally prepared to fight. Its really hard to do especially if youre generally a good person who does not like hurting other people. But if you’ve been beat up or jumped before you already understand that fighting back is a lot better of an option than just standing there and taking it.
I currently just wrestle as a hobby and can say that as long as the guy has little experience, you can beat him in wrestling no matter the size. There is a certain point when a big guy who is a novice’s skill level becomes competent enough to occassionally beat you. This applies to all sports though. If a bigger or fitter guy knows enough of the basics, he stands a chance at beating you, even if you know more techniques than him, (unless your arsenal of techniques are specifically tailored to beat bigger opponents).
What’s the best way to escape the police in a high-speed car chase?
Simple: Elude law enforcement in a jurisdiction with a strict pursuit policy. In my department, unless a suspect vehicle was an obvious DWI (swerving white line to white line, erratic speed changes) or had committed a violent felony, vehicle pursuits got cancelled by a commander almost instantly. There is so much liability at play in a pursuit situation that many departments are getting very conservative in their response protocols to situations like this.
As far as maneuvering tactics when they’re actually pursuing you, there’s really no sense diving in – you’ve got too many things going against you:
- Communication. Every involved officer, as well as their supervisors and their supervisors’ supervisors, have radios, both in-car and portable on their person. Can you dial your cell phone and drive with one hand at 120 mph while you coordinate with accomplices miles down the road? Probably not.
- Collaboration. If a pursuit has been sanctioned, the longer it goes on the more officers are going to be in on the hunt. And if you stray toward the boundary of a jurisdiction (city limit, county border, and so on), you’re going to get mutual aid response from other agencies, who may be even less restricted than your original pursuers. Have fun with that.
- Convergence. You can go in one direction at a time, but law enforcement response to your location will be omnidirectional. You’re going to have LEOs swarming your vehicle from 360 degrees and, if a helicopter gets tossed in the mix, three dimensions. You simply cannot go fast enough to counter this. Even if you were trying to elude the North Dakota Highway Patrol on I-94 in an Italian supercar, you’ve still got a lot of variables to buck regarding interagency cooperation.
- Contraptions. Hope you’ve got solid rubber tires, because if the agency gets a lock on your direction of flight, you’re getting spiked – and if you hit spikes, you’re hosed. You’ll drive for a while, because spike strips are designed to puncture tires so they slowly deflate as opposed to blowing out. But once they’re flat, driving on them will make them disintegrate; then you’re driving on rims. Now you’re limited to fifteen to twenty miles per hour, and you’re in danger of your vehicle catching fire from the spraying sparks. Meanwhile, the agency is moving the K-9 unit to point position so when you shoulder your smoldering jalopy and make a run for it, Cujo’s got less ground to cover before he eats your forearm. Did you think to wear chain mail?
- Concentration. How often do you drive in this manner? Unless you’re running because you’re on parole, this is likely your first dance. Sure, you’ve driven fast before – for a while. Then, for whatever reason, you got uncomfortable and backed off. Maybe your car made a sound you got concerned about, maybe you caught a glint you thought might be a trooper’s windshield, maybe you thought you heard the faintest pulses of a siren. Whatever it was, it weakened your resolve and you slowed down. You have no such luxury here. And while this is fresh for you, this is, to many of the people pursuing you, another day another dollar. They’ve trained for this in training scenarios and have been involved in pursuits in the field. They run code multiple times a week. Even if one of your pursuers was a rookie who got eaten up by the stress, there will be a dozen vets to take his place.
- Cognizance. Unless you’ve lived around and driven on your path of flight for decades, I can almost guarantee you do not know it as well as your pursuers. I drove a hundred miles a night, four nights a week, on the same few dozen streets in my beat. I knew every pothole and curbstone, every back alley and shortcut. Plus, supplementing my knowledge was dispatch, who had a real time, God’s eye view of the situation, and who could foreshadow upcoming turns based on officers’ GPS and current road conditions.
- Conveyances. Your chosen city of flight may have the rattiest squad cars in the country, but they have the distinct benefit of redundancy. Your escape vehicle is precious, because there is only one. Nuke a tire from hitting spikes or a pothole, and you’re roasted. If a patrol car has a blowout, that unit will fall out and be replaced by another. If you think your car can outrun and outlast what will effectively be an infinite number of responding unit vehicles (when you account for interagency involvement), have at it; otherwise, you may need to rethink your day.
- Control. What is your flight plan – are you going to rely on top end speed on the open highway? Or are you going to try to lose responding officers in an intricate series of turns? You’ve got a tall order ahead either way.
- First, if you’ve got something in your hands that can outperform Crown Victoria and Charger interceptors on the interstate, you’re going to be relatively easy to spot – you won’t be doing this in a stock Toyota. Second, you’ve got Little Brother to worry about – if you wax someone’s doors at double the speed limit, they’re probably going to call the police. Instant update to last known location and direction of travel, which allows retriangulation if you managed to create space. You probably haven’t, though, because even with vehicles capable of impressive top end speed, there comes a point where the vehicle is so functionally light you can no longer safely operate it in real world driving conditions. My top speed running code in a Crown Vic was 134 mph, which was frankly stupid – the suspension was floating so badly that driving over a heads-up penny probably would have sent me into a terminal fishtail. This all means that, while you may maintain some semblance of distance between yourself and the point car, you’re very unlikely to be completely leaving them in your sonic wake.
- Alternately, if you’re banking on turns (you got me, pun intended), you’re going to have to keep your head about you. Stress has a tendency to get the better of your attempts at rational thought. Was that three lefts or four? This looks familiar, I’d better go the other way…was that a school crossing sign or a dead end sign? Is Main Street continuous this far south? Which side of the tracks am I on? Ah, now we’re cooking with – what? Since when is there a cul-de-sac here? Game over – whether that consists of walking backward at gunpoint or feeling Cujo getting his nom nom nom on.
As you may have gathered, I am of the opinion that there is no right answer to this question. Vehicle pursuits never end well – I’ve never seen an authorized pursuit go down and then heard a commander say, “Gee, that was tidy.” If the pursuit is terminated by a supervisor, it’s bad because the suspect got away. If it gets authorized, it’s not going to have a pretty ending, most likely. The vast majority of the time, the suspect ends up needing medical attention by the time it’s over. It might be for something minor, like flushing pepper spray out of your eyes, pulling TASER barbs out of your flesh, or treating a dog bite. It might be something major, like pronouncing you and your two passengers dead after your car hits an oak tree at 107 mph (seen it – decidedly unpretty). Take all the liberties you want with your own life and death – but running from the police puts scores of people in harm’s way, even for a short pursuit.
No matter the charge or the perceived consequences, never run from the police.
– Justin Freeman, Former Patrol Officer
Did Japan have a war plan against the US after Pearl Harbor?
Yes, Japan did have a war plan against the US after Pearl Harbor.
Japan’s hopes was that after destroying the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, that it would take at minimum 2 years for the US to rebuild the fleet back up to seriously take on the Japanese fleet.
Fortunately for us, the three air-craft carriers that were apart of the Pacific Fleet were out to sea, each on their own mission. The USS Lexington and Task Force 12 left Pearl Harbor on December 5th to deliver 18 SB2U Vindicator Dive Bombers designated VSMB-231 to Midway Island. USS Saratoga was in San Diego in order to embark her air group that had been training ashore during her refitting.. And USS Enterprise left Pearl Harbor on November 28th to deliver VMF-211 to Wake Island.
Japan’s plan was basically knock out the US fleet leaving them the dominant unchallenged power for at least 2 years. During this time Japan would conquer Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and Malaya for their oil and rubber. Not to mention the many other islands and coastal territories that they conquered in order to gain access to other resources to build and maintain their military, such as coal and iron.
Once they’ve secured the necessary resources to continue to become self-sufficient, Japan would heavily fortify every island territory. The Japanese military leaders (who ignored the warnings of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto that there was no way to win a war with the US), believed that by doing this they would ensure their victory against the US. The idea was that by heavily fortifying every island would cost the US thousands to tens of thousands of casualties in order to just take one island. Even if the US defeated the Japanese defenders, Japanese military leaders believed that the cost to take one island would be considered too great and eventually the US would come back to the negotiation tables with much better terms for them.
However, Japan underestimated the US’s industrial ability. Prior to the start of the war, the US only had a total of 352 US Navy vessels operating in and around US territories; the Pacific Fleet itself consisted of less than half of that, 172 ships. It took the US less than a year to not only rebuild enough ships to fill the US Pacific Fleet, but by the end of the war the US Navy was operating 6,768 ships. Where as Japan’s fleet at the start was at 401 vessels.
They also underestimated the American people’s determination. Instead of being demoralized, like the Japanese military leaders believed would happen, it energized and encouraged Americans from across the country. Within weeks, there was over 1 million volunteers. By 1944, the US military was a 12 million man powerhouse… just an fyi, the USSR military was also around 12 million man strong.
To summarize, the Japanese military never had any hope of winning a conventional war against the US. Even if they managed to pull off their turtle defense strategy and stockpiled enough critical resources to continue to operate, the US military would’ve eventually found a way to crack their defenses. Who knows, instead of just skipping one island, we might have skipped two or three
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