Behavioral and Psychological Responses

One of the most important topics covered in Grossman's book is the physiological responses to combat and killing. In most instances, short of actually being shot, struck, or physically injured in some way, all of the things that happen to the body are self-imposed – be they benefits or hindrances. One goal of Grossman is to understand this reality and to work at optimizing the good elements while minimizing the bad.

At first, he provides a heart-rate spectrum to help the reader understand how certain physiological responses relate. The numbers for relative heart rates provided aren’t exact since different body types and levels of health will differ between people, but these averages do provide a good spectrum for analysis. It isn’t meant to be used while in such dire situations – you won’t have time to check your pulse – but understanding what will happen to your body as your heart-rate increases, and what you can do to improve your performance, are what matter.

Condition White (<80 bpm)

Condition Yellow (100 bpm)

Condition Red (120-140 bpm)

Condition Gray (140-180 bpm)

Condition Black (>180 bpm)

I don’t want to dig too deeply into this, leave that up to Grossman when you read or listen to it, but we can touch on a few things.

The body releases various hormones (adrenaline, endorphins, cortisol, etc.) to help ready itself for survival, which in turn causes the aforementioned benefits and drawbacks. By understanding what may happen, we can prepare ourselves and others for that eventuality to not be blind-sided by it or even prevent it from occurring – e.g., staying out of Condition Black. Additionally, it helps inform us of some of the odd behaviors we see in others that undergo preparatory training, engage in combat, and tackle the subsequent trauma.

Almost one-third of the book is dedicated to discussing the various impacts of the mind and body – providing anecdotes of individuals engaged in life-and-death engagements to how these may manifest. Grossman delivers much greater detail, but I will leave that for you to discover; however, I will bring up a few critical aspects that I would like to discuss.

Training Processes

“You do not rise to the occasion in combat, you sink to the level of your training. Do not expect the combat fairy to come bonk you with the combat wand and suddenly make you capable of doing things that you never rehearsed before.” [Section Two: Chapter Two]

In our own section of The Human Domain, we discussed the nature of human decision-making – the brain's inference of stimuli and subsequent decision-making reactions. Grossman hits on this system when the forebrain – i.e., critical thought processing – is taken out of the equation, and humans act more instinctually to external and internal stimuli. The goal in understanding this is to shape our automated responses so that in time-sensitive and stress-filled situations, we respond in desirable ways.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman says:

“By thinking through exactly what we want a warrior to do in combat, and training him to say or do exactly the right thing in training, we can ensure that the right words and actions will be there when lives are on the line.” [Section Two, Chapter Two]

You have the ability to do the same thing that anyone else can do. You just need to develop the neural pathways that allow you to do it. By drilling actions through repetition, focusing on proper maneuvers and body position, and avoiding wasteful actions, we are strengthening specific neural processes that allow us to execute a particular task more efficiently. When you hear about the number of hours it takes to be classified as an expert or master in a specific skill, what is fundamentally being discussed is the amount of time it may take for those pathways to develop to such a degree that it can be executed with ease. It becomes a near instinctual action that requires little thought and would take considerable effort to deviate from on the practitioner’s part.

Grossman promotes constant drilling in actions that individuals would need to do to survive a combat scenario and defeat a threat. If you don't drill those actions, if you don't strengthen those neural pathways while you have the time, you can't expect to be able to do it when your heart-rate skyrockets and your body and being flushed with various stress hormones. You will panic, fumble, and forget the step you need to do. You will invariably do something – even if the something is nothing – but if you drill responses to these types of scenarios, your brain will fall back on this training.

Avoid Training Bad Habits

“If the trainee is conditioned to stop when he is hit (as if the scenario is over), he programs an undesirable and potentially self-destructive action into his mind.” [Section Three, Chapter Two]

What you drill in training will become manifest when a combat scenario becomes a reality. This means the elements of the training environment present – only because it is a training environment - will be executed in the real world. Remember, everything you do in training becomes hardwired in the brain the more you do it. Grossman provides several examples of this, causing law enforcement officers and federal agents problems – some, unfortunately, resulting in death.

“One example of this can be observed in the way police officers conducted range training with revolvers for almost a century. Because they wanted to avoid having to pick up all the spent brass afterwards, the officers would fire six shots, stop, dump their empty brass from their revolvers into their hands, place the brass in their pockets, reload, and then continue shooting… After the smoke had settled in many real gunfights, officers were shocked to discover empty brass in their pockets with no memory of how it got there. On several occasions, dead cops were found with brass in their hands, dying in the middle of an administrative procedure that had been drilled into them.” [Section Two, Chapter Two]

This story's moral is to ensure that training is conducted from initial actions all the way to completion. If it doesn't make sense to pause at a particular point in the real world or introduce some non-critical action, don't make it a part of the training.

Evolution of Combat Technology

“The concept of an “evolution” of combat is appropriate since the battlefield is the ultimate realm of Darwinian natural selection. With few exceptions, any weapon or system that survives for any length of time does so because of its utility, not simply because of superstition. Anything that his effective is copied and perpetuated, and anything ineffective results in death, defeat and extinction.” [Section Three, Chapter Six]

As I brought up in Life and Evolution, evolution has as much to do with death as it does life and as much to do with your environment as it does yourself. It is all about relationships and can a creature survive under those conditions. In the crucible of combat, individuals and groups are tested - not just in their own physical abilities but also in the quality of their training, organization, doctrine, and equipment. We improve upon our abilities to thrive in combat while simultaneously shaping environmental conditions so that our adversaries do not.

Environments change over time, as human and non-human variables shape them. Because of this, tactics and strategies that have worked in the past may fail to achieve the same results. Why is that? Because the tactics and strategies employed were solutions to specific environmental and mission variables. In mathematical terms, when the equation changes, so too does the solution. Therefore, military minds seek to analyze the nature of contemporary environments and adjust established methods in order to survive. We know, or speculate, which solutions are suitable since they don't shape conditions that result in failure.

Grossman discusses a history of technological conflict between offensive and defensive weapons, armors, and transportation modes. He emphasizes four attributes that are sought after in military tech, and humanity has engaged in thousands and thousands of years of arms races based around these attributes – force, mobility, distance, and protection. This includes the discussion of the psychological edge that these attributes can provide the warrior as they engage in combat against fellow human beings.