The Threat-Proof Podcast

Two Terror Attacks. One Day. Is Your Family Ready?

The ThreatProof Podcast — Guest appearance on News Radio 1110 KFAB with Chris Baker The ThreatProof Podcast — Guest appearance on News Radio 1110 KFAB with Chris BakerAbout This Episode This week I joined Chris Baker in studio at News Radio 1110 KFAB in Omaha to break down what’s happened since my original Iran threat assessment — and what it means for your family this weekend. We had two terrorist attacks on American soil in a single day. We’ve had four ideologically driven attacks since the Iran strikes began. St. Patrick’s Day weekend is here. And most families still don’t have a plan. That’s what this conversation is about. What We Cover * The four-tier threat model — and how every tier has now confirmed * Why two attacks in one day didn’t get the media coverage it deserved * Vehicle attacks: why they produce the highest casualties in the shortest amount of time, and why ISIS literally publishes a how-to guide targeting events like St. Patrick’s Day parades * The Tactical Twos framework — the same planning system used in special operations, applied to a night out this weekend * What to have in your car’s medical kit right now (and why a box of Band-Aids doesn’t count) * Church and synagogue security: why you have to be your own first responders, and why most events are over before police arrive * The poll that should alarm every American: what percentage of fighting-age men say they’d actually defend this country * Why the weapon is never the problem — and why that conversation matters more than ever Key Takeaways * Four attacks. Fourteen days. Every tier of the original threat assessment has produced a real-world event. This is no longer theoretical. * Ideological violence doesn’t need a direct tie to Iran. The attackers don’t need orders from Tehran. They need a trigger for hate that was already there. The Iran strikes provided that trigger. * You are the first responder. The majority of active threat events are over within five minutes — before police can arrive. The people who stopped these recent attacks were right there, and they were prepared. * Vehicle attacks are the highest casualty-producing threat. More people can be injured and killed by a vehicle in less time than almost any other method. ISIS publishes guidance on exactly how and where to do it. St. Patrick’s Day events are the kind of target they name. * The Tactical Twos in practice. Two rally points. Two alert signals — one overt, one covert. Two places to barricade. Two places to find medical aid. A serious trauma kit in your car. This is not complicated. It’s just not being done. * Stop the Bleed saves lives. A tourniquet and wound-packing material fit in a bag or at your ankle. A two-hour class gives you the skills. Most people won’t do it. Be the exception. * Only 45% of men aged 18–34 say they’d stay and fight if the U.S. was invaded. If you don’t think that has implications for how we handle domestic threats, think again. Behind the Scenes Chris asked me on short notice after two attacks happened on the same day — and what struck me was that most of the coverage treated them as separate, unrelated events. They’re not. The pattern I laid out in my original assessment is confirming faster than I expected, and that’s exactly what I told Chris on air. The caller who mentioned that ROTC students at UNL are being told not to wear their uniforms on campus — that hit home. That’s force protection. That’s a real signal about the threat environment we’re operating in right now, right here in Nebraska. If you’re heading out this weekend, have a quick conversation before you go. Pick a rally point. Know where your medical kit is. Stay 99% in the moment and enjoy yourself — but run 1% of your attention in the background. That’s not paranoia. That’s just what a responsible person does. Check out The Threat-Proof Family Guide and prepare your loved ones for nearly any crisis: Threat-Proof Family [https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/the-threat-proof-family-guide/]The Chris Baker Show on KFAB: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-chris-baker-323959657/episode/ideological-attacks-a-threat-to-every-american-326736583?app=listen [https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-chris-baker-323959657/episode/ideological-attacks-a-threat-to-every-american-326736583?app=listen] Get full access to Threat-Proof Newsletter at threatproof.substack.com/subscribe [https://threatproof.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Minneapolis Mayhem and Mindset

Real-World Lessons from Recent EventsBy Trevor (OSS | Street Smarts | Threat-Proof Coaching) Minneapolis, January 2026. The recent fatal shooting involving federal agents (ICE/Border Patrol) in our own backyard is a stark reminder: high-stress law enforcement encounters can escalate in seconds. Whether the command is lawful or not, the priority is survival—not winning the argument in the moment. If you carry a gun every day (open or concealed), these basics are non-negotiable. They’re drawn directly from John Farnam’s “Rules of Stupid” and decades of practical training in personal protection. John Farnam’s Rules of Stupid (The Foundation) WHY DO I HAVE TO KEEP REPEATING THIS! Don’t set yourself up for trouble before it starts: * Don’t go to stupid places * Don’t associate with stupid people * Don’t do stupid things * (Often added: Don’t do them at stupid times) These rules prevent 90% of the avoidable problems armed citizens face. Stupid varies by person and context, but following them keeps you out of the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. The 3 Core Rules for Police Encounters * Comply clearly and slowly When police give a command (lawful or unlawful), follow it purposefully. No sudden movements. Survival comes first—any dispute gets resolved later in court, not on the street. * Never make motions toward your weapon Any hand movement toward your waistline, pockets, holster, or anywhere that could be misinterpreted as reaching for a gun is a high-risk trigger in a tense encounter. Keep hands where officers can see them. Period. * Disclose you’re armed when appropriate If the situation allows (e.g., during a pat-down or traffic stop), calmly and clearly say: “I am legally armed.” Hands still visible, no sudden moves. It’s not always required by law, but it’s often very smart—it reduces misunderstandings. When to Actually Resist The Police This can be a deep subject with so many if’s that I only dare touch upon it. You'd better only do it as a measure of last resort to save your life or that of another clear innocent against unlawful (or perhaps horrible) conduct by the police without other reasonable recourse. Some states allow reasonable resistance against clearly unlawful arrest, but you will often see the myth that people think they can use deadly force when law enforcement is infringing on their rights or arresting them in circumstances they feel are unconstitutional. It’s far from that clear. Many states will not allow resistance to arrest, even if the arrest is unlawful, short of a very specific need to protect yourself immediately from serious harm.Very importantly, the lawfulness of the encounter is never judged in the street. You can still end up very dead and even innocent, or very much a criminal, dead or alive. The Bottom Line The only person responsible for your survival in that encounter is you. I carry nearly every single day.I’ve never once worried about getting shot by police because I generally follow Farnam’s Rules…generally, and I take measures to make sure everyone knows I am the good guy. See my previous posts on the subject here: Follow these basics—Farnam’s rules + clear compliance + no reaching—and you won’t have to worry either short of some very extreme situations. Why This Matters Now The Minneapolis incident (January 24, 2026) highlights how quickly things can go sideways during federal operations or routine contacts. Video analysis and official statements show conflicting accounts, but the outcome was tragic.These rules aren’t about blame—they’re about stacking the odds in your favor so you go home. Want More? If you’re serious about responsible carry and threat response: * Subscribe for free updates * Want to master the basics to keep you safer from crime, armed or not? Check out my 30-Day Street Ready Challenge Course: https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/streetready30 [https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/streetready30] Be capable. Be safe. Go out there. TrevorOSS | Threat-Proof Coachingthreatproof.substack.com Get full access to Threat-Proof Newsletter at threatproof.substack.com/subscribe [https://threatproof.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Don't Become a Danger Sandwich and How Not to Make Kidnapping Easier

The face of crime has changed. Ten years ago, staying out of trouble meant staying out of bad neighborhoods, avoiding gangs, and not involving yourself in criminal activity. That simple formula no longer works. Today, police are increasingly handcuffed by policies that protect criminals over victims. Drug addicts are subsidized. The mentally ill roam free until—as one newscaster grimly observed—”every mentally ill person gets to slaughter one innocent person before they do something with them.” Active threat incidents have increased several hundred percent over the last decade. Random violent attacks against completely innocent people have become routine. This isn’t fear-mongering. This is the hybrid threat environment I’ve been warning about. And if you’re not prepared for it, you’re failing yourself and everyone who depends on you. The Numbers Don’t Lie Consider these statistics: 1.2 million violent crimes are reported annually in the U.S. Eight out of ten people will be victimized by violent crime in their lifetime. One in ten households will experience property crime in a single year. But here’s what should really alarm you: only 41.5% of violent crimes and 31% of property crimes are actually reported. Most crimes are unreported and unsolved. If your safety plan depends on criminals being caught and prosecuted, you’ve already lost. Your primary goal is never to get the criminal captured. That’s a side benefit at best. Your primary goal is to defend yourself and your loved ones—first and foremost. The Protector Code: 1% Effort for 100% Safety I developed what I call the Protector Code: dedicate just 1% of your life to personal safety and security. One percent of a week is about 1.5 hours. That’s it. Fitness, training, education, watching videos, developing a home defense plan, organizing equipment in your car—small investments that compound into massive protection. If you won’t do this for yourself, and you refuse to do it for your family, you’re failing them. Period. What I’ve found, through decades of training law enforcement and military personnel, is that small doses of safety can increase your protection by 100% or more. The 1% effort is the place to start—but not the place to finish. One Minute Lessons That Save Lives The news is filled with stories where I think: A one minute lesson could have saved that person. These aren’t complex tactical maneuvers requiring years of training. They’re simple principles that, once understood, become patterns and frameworks you can apply flexibly across countless situations. The Florida School Shooting: Students were killed as an attacker stood outside a classroom doorway, looked in, saw them standing in the middle of the room, and opened fire. They knew it was an active threat situation. They just had no idea what to do. If their parents had given them a one minute lesson—barricade the door, get in the corner out of view from the hallway, grab a weapon, be ready—those children would be alive today. As a father, that’s the kind of regret that keeps me up at night. It’s why I do this work. Don’t Become a Danger Sandwich One Minute to a Safer Commute: When standing in public—especially around transit—put your back to something solid. Keep everything potentially dangerous in front of you. Don’t stand in front of active train tracks, staring at your phone, with your back turned to everyone walking past. That makes you a danger sandwich—vulnerable from multiple directions with no awareness of what’s approaching. The subway attack video shows exactly this failure. A man in black approaches an unsuspecting rider from behind and shoves him onto the tracks in front of a train. The victim is now in critical condition. The one-minute to safety lesson: Position all danger in front of you. Glance at your phone if you must—you’re human—but maintain awareness of your surroundings. That simple adjustment could have prevented this tragedy. The Capability Assessment Workplace Safety Scenario: An 18-year-old store employee in Florida saw a man shoplifting. Her response? Block his path to the door. Ask yourself: What did she hope to achieve physically by standing between a full-grown adult male and the exit? The answer is nothing. All she did was put herself at risk. In fact, she likely made the crime easier. The suspect had cased the store earlier, saw an unprotected, unaware, smaller female alone—and returned. When she positioned herself at the door, she essentially delivered herself to him. I call this the Capability Assessment: Before you act, ask yourself what you actually hope to achieve with your physical resistance, and whether you’re capable of achieving it. This young woman’s actions were legal. But tactically? A disaster. Morally? Debatable—risking your life over property rarely makes sense. She did some things right: she drew massive attention to herself, and when he tried to force her into a vehicle, she fought like hell to stay out of it. As a former police officer, I can tell you that loading an unwilling person into a car is one of the hardest things to do if they truly resist. But I see people kidnapped all the time who clearly didn’t fight with everything they had. The one minute lesson: If someone tries to take you to a secondary location, fight with 100% commitment. Whatever they might do to you there is worse than the risk of fighting here. Neo-Barbarism: The Hybrid Threat Reality Some call this “assassination nation,” but that’s too simplistic. What we’re experiencing is neo-barbarism—a society so over-civilized it can no longer protect itself from those who choose to act like barbarians. In that subway video, four people appear. Three of them are committing crimes—jumping turnstiles, random assault. Only one is obeying the law. And he’s the victim. Our Constitution, as John Adams noted in 1798, “was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The whale is through the net. The barbarians are inside the gates. The systems we’ve built work for people who are generally law-abiding and moral, with occasional capacity to deal firmly with sociopaths and criminals. Today? The suspects are treated as victims, and society itself is blamed. This isn’t a political statement. It’s operational reality. And your survival depends on recognizing it. For more on the hybrid threat environment and case studies of recent attacks, read: The Whale is Through the Net and The Barbarians Are Inside the Gates [https://threatproof.substack.com/p/the-whale-is-through-the-net-and] Your Assignment The patterns I’ve outlined here—situational positioning, capability assessment, commitment to resistance—aren’t the end of your training. They’re the beginning. Over time, you won’t need a massive collection of one minute lessons. These principles become internalized frameworks that allow you to respond appropriately across a broad variety of situations. But you have to start. Take the first step For individuals and families: Sign up for my Street Ready 30 Day Challenge [https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/streetready30]. [https://academy.threatproofcommunity.com/streetready30] You’ll get an ebook, video lessons, real-world examples, and a workbook with specific tasks to improve your safety by 100%—with just 1% effort. This is the perfect starting course for you or anyone in your family. For groups and organizations: Bring the Street SMAARTS Seminar [https://highthreatsystems.com/street-smaarts-seminar] to your workplace, church, school, or community group. This is the full framework delivered live—ideal for teams who want to build a culture of readiness together. Go out there. Be safe. Be ready. Trevor Get full access to Threat-Proof Newsletter at threatproof.substack.com/subscribe [https://threatproof.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

A PREDICTABLE DEATH IN MINNEAPOLIS AND THE NEW NORMAL OF TRIBALISM, POLITICS, AND EMOTION IN PLACE OF REASON

The Minneapolis ICE Shooting: Put Your Thinking Cap On The shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis is generating enormous heat. Predictably, most of the conversation is driven by tribalism, politics, or emotion. This event was 100% predictable after we had witnessed rising violence and the use of vehicles to obstruct agents, with shots fired, and people already wounded and killed. See my earlier article after the first attacks on ICE here: I’m asking you to do something different. Instead of reacting, I want you to examine this incident through the lens of physics and human factors—from the officer’s perspective at the moment force is used. Human Reaction Time: Starting and Stopping Most people don’t understand that reaction time works in both directions. It takes time to perceive a threat and initiate a response. But it also takes time to stop a response once it’s started. Studies show the average reaction time to a simple stimulus is around 0.25 seconds. But that’s under ideal conditions in a lab—not on a snowy street with a vehicle accelerating toward you. Complex decision-making under stress takes longer. And once you’ve committed to pressing a trigger, there’s a lag before your brain can send the signal to stop, your body processes that signal, and your finger actually ceases its action. Shots fired after a threat has passed aren’t necessarily evidence of malice—they may be evidence of basic human physiology. Limited Attention: You Can’t See Everything Human attention is finite and selective. Under stress, it narrows further—a phenomenon known as perceptual tunneling. We simply cannot see and process everything that is happening. Our short-term memory capacity is limited, and we can visually track only a few objects at a time. At times, our focus on the threat is so complete that even things that would be clearly in front of us on video are never even recognized. Check out the “Invisible Gorilla” on YouTube if you want a dose of that reality. Armchair quarterbacks watching video footage can pause, rewind, and zoom in on details like the exact angle of the tires, the precise position of other officers, and the vehicle’s speed. Of course, their perspective today often goes through an emotional and tribal filter, altering the very facts they see, just like stress alters what we see. They can analyze frame by frame, with the benefit of hindsight, rewind, slow motion, and zoom in. An officer in the moment cannot. He’s processing movement, sound, shouted commands, potential threats to himself and others—all in fractions of a second. He doesn’t have the luxury of freeze-frame analysis. The question isn’t “what does the video show?” The question is “what did the officer reasonably perceive in real time?” Stick or Snake: The Survival Response Here’s a principle you need to understand: in survival situations, humans don’t have time to verify—they react to patterns. If you’re walking through tall grass and see a curved shape on the ground, you jump first and determine whether it’s a stick or a snake second. That’s not a flaw. That’s millions of years of evolution keeping you alive. The cost of assuming “stick” when it’s actually a snake is death. The cost of assuming “snake” when it’s actually a stick is a momentary spike of adrenaline. Officers confronting a vehicle moving toward them are operating on this same survival wiring. The brain is screaming “threat” and initiating a response before the conscious mind can complete a full analysis. The legal and tactical question is whether that perception was reasonable given the circumstances—not whether it was correct in hindsight. What Factors Are You Weighing? I want you to engage your high brain here—not your tribal brain. Consider: * Limits of human perception * Limits of human reaction time * Limits of human performance in situations that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving What factors are you weighing in your assessment? Drop them in the comments below. I’ll be adding comments with specific data points as I continue to review the available footage and information. Thinking hat required. Stay safe. Be reasonable and rational; others won’t.Trevor Get full access to Threat-Proof Newsletter at threatproof.substack.com/subscribe [https://threatproof.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Sydney Terror Attack at Bondi Beach: You Are the True First Responder

Title: Sydney Terror Attack at Bondi Beach: Key Early TakeawaysBecause the next event could happen in minutes Retired Green Beret Trevor Thrasher breaks down the December 14, 2025, Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack—11 dead, dozens wounded—and pulls no-punches lessons from early reports. What You'll Get: The Ostrich Effect and why open-space events are prime targets Windows of opportunity: How one bystander became a hero Plus-One Rule: What to do after you disarm an attacker Weapon familiarity & misidentification risks You are the true first responder—own those critical minutes Quick family talk points to review tonight Holidays mean higher risk. Don’t wait for the next headline. By Trevor ThrasherRetired Green Beret · Former SWAT & Street Officer · Counter-Terror Contractor · Executive Protection Specialist & Tactical Trainer Get full access to Threat-Proof Newsletter at threatproof.substack.com/subscribe [https://threatproof.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]