Survival Options:
Hostage Survival & Escape

Hostage Survival & Escape Options: Pawns, Ransoms, and Slaves

Police often find home invasion scenes where the victims are all tied up and all dead. There'll be a group large enough to put up a fight, yet they let themselves get tied up. The criminals reassure them, 'We just want to tie you up. We won't hurt you." The victims didn't realize - why do they want to tie us up if they don't want to hurt us? But they beleived it.

The Lie You Want to Believe for Survival

When someone is told a lie they desperately want to believe for survival, they will believe it – as when a captor tells a captive, “Do what I say and I won’t hurt you.” But anyone who threatens violence is likely, after all, to use violence. Even if a captor holds a weapon on one victim to demand obedience from the others (a hostage/slave situation), he'll likely kill them all anyway.

Kevin Bright, 19, and his sister Kathryn, 21, arrived home to find a gunman waiting in a bedroom. He told them he wasn't going to hurt them and only wanted their car. The man forced Kevin to bind his sister, then he bound Kevin and shot him twice. Kevin played dead. The man then killed Kathryn.

Kevin Bright is the only victim known to survive an attack by Dennis Rader of Wichita KS – the self-proclaimed BTK: Bind, Torture, Kill serial killer.

Two men entered through an unlocked door, attacked a couple, and bound their hands with cords. One man put down his gun to bind the wife. The husband left a space between his hands, pretended he was vomiting while freeing his hands, and grabbed the gun. The thugs fled.

He grabbed the gun because the thugs hadn't covered their faces – so he assumed they were going to kill them.

Sometimes hostages survive unscathed. But without a crystal ball, the victims can’t predict if the criminal will simply rob and leave or, if not wearing a mask, he’ll kill all eyewitnesses. The criminal may originally plan only to rob, but if he decides to bind his victims to ensure his getaway – he may realize he now has absolute god-like control and, savoring a power-frenzy, torture his victims to death.

On the other hand, these victims survived unharmed:

The couple saw a car pull up on their street in a very quiet neighborhood in Durham NC. One of them opened the door to peek out, and three gunmen stormed in, saying over and over, "Do you want to die today? Don't look at me." The woman says she didn't look as they were robbed.

Terry Pettigrew and Mark Bowden walked through Richard R. Mayer's unlocked door and beat, bound, and robbed him. After deciding not to shoot Mayer, they left.

Two teenage brothers were home alone in the upscale California neighborhood when the younger boy answered a knock on the door. Two gunmen forced their way in, tied up the boys, looted the home, and left without harming the boys.

82-year-old Dora Bryant and 80-year-old Lawrence Bryant were gardening in their front yard when a man with a knife forced them inside the home and beat, bound, and robbed them. He left without killing them.

Victim’s Options in a Hostage Situation – use your intuition to choose:
• Posturing will unlikely intimidate an armed hostage-taker.
• Fleeing – the sooner the better. Anyone escaping might soon bring the police. He may just flee.
• Outsmarting – choose a ploy that you can use.
• Surrendering puts you fully at the mercy of a criminal. However, your intuition may tell you to submit.
• Fighting is to attack him with the passionate intent to fully disable him. This also breaks the spellbound fear paralysis and creates chaos to allow at least one victim to run for help.

POSSIBLY THE BEST RESPONSE

Three men with clubs invaded a Calgary home, but didn't realize seven people were inside. When they tried to bind one of the residents, the others began stabbing and hacking the thugs with kitchen knives and a meat cleaver. The victims held the injured robbers for police.

Although survival of life-and-death crises allow no guarantees, possibly the best response to a hostage crime – following your intuition – is to refuse to be bound, and instead surprise him with a sudden, furious attack. The sooner you act the better. If one of you does act, the others had better immediately join in, or create chaos – such as fleeing while yelling, “I’m getting our neighbor the cop." Destroy his control and spur him to flee!

Just before dawn, Jean and Kevin McDonough ran to their screaming 15-year-old daughter and found a burly masked man holding a knife to her throat. The family attacked him. The father held him in a headlock as the mother wrested the knife from him and the daughter called police. Until police arrived, the family overwhelmed serial killer Adam Leroy Lane.

A panic-button/siren on a house alarm system could be a lifesaver in such survival situations. A shrieking alarm usually sends criminals running.

Sanford Strong, SWAT team instructor and author of “Strong on Defense” maintains that any victim fleeing is a powerful deterrent to the crime scene getting worse. If he reacts by killing any of his hostages, then he probably had been inclined all along to kill them. Running away is not abandoning the other victims. It’s perhaps the best way of saving them. Even a husband leaving his wife in dire straits, or a parent leaving a child – gut wrenching and unnatural as that may feel – is probably the most viable survival option in a horrific situation. Discuss this unpleasant survival subject with your loved ones now to be prepared – just in case. Teach children that their job is to run outside for help.

In hostage situations, the initial assault will be very violent. The rescue will be violent, too. Keep down. Don't be a hero by trying to help the rescuers – they'll shoot anything that moves.

Military survival schools teach that a hostage’s greatest danger is hopelessness. Planning an escape/survival strategy gives a sense of hope. The first part of that planning is befriending and cooperating with your captors so they’ll be less likely to kill you. The second part is always calmly testing the limits of how far they’ll allow you stray beyond their control – toward an escape opportunity. The optimal mindset is neutral – not despairing over your plight, but rather hoping and planning for survival.

Perhaps you can avoid being taken hostage altogether by learning how best to avoid Kidnapping.

Deter a predator by holding Pepper Spray & a Personal Security Alarm (a.k.a. noisemaker or screamer) in plain sight.

Worst-Case Scenarios:
Crime Prevention Tips for Victims of Violent Crimes

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