Live Ready: A Guide to Protecting Yourself In An Uncertain World

A superb read! Immediately useful and practical. It’s for everyone interested in achieving greater awareness and in turn greater safety. A must read!

—Joe Navarro, author of the international bestseller, What Every BODY is Saying

"Sam is the ultimate warrior, both mentally and physically. He understands we have to invest today to both protect and shape the future of tomorrow. I could not recommend Live Ready more highly."

—James Scalo, CEO Burns & Scalo Real Estate, and Author of Work them to Life

"I’ve known Sam as one of the world’s leading authorities on personal security for nearly 20 years, and Live Ready is the first book of its kind to provide real, comprehensive solutions for everyday people for living in a predatory world. Buy this book, and give copies to everyone you love."

—Karen Eden, Martial Arts Master Instructor

"Take it from a guy who has taught street safety and situational awareness since 1969, including 29 years as a police officer: Live Ready is a vitally important book for everyone—pacifist and warrior alike. Sam Rosenberg’s writing is clear, straight to the point, and information-rich. His innovative approach to ‘protecting yourself in an uncertain world’ made me sit up and go, ‘This is great. Why haven’t I thought of this?’ This book will change your life."

—Loren Christensen, bestselling author of over 70 books, including On Combat, Deadly Force Encounters, and Surviving a School Shooting

"Blending a mastery of human behavior and a warrior ethos, Live Ready is a gripping and invaluable resource that will change the way you view personal safety. With powerful personal anecdotes and practical lessons, Rosenberg equips readers with the skills needed to protect themselves and their loved ones in these turbulent times. This essential guide offers a lifeline in a world plagued by violence, urging readers to embrace a life of readiness and live life to the fullest."

—Robin Dreeke, retired FBI agent, USMC Veteran, author of Sizing People Up: A Veteran FBI Agent’s User Manual for Behavior Prediction

"Early in Sam’s book, Live Ready, I came across this statement: ‘Knowing how to protect yourself from danger is much more than just a skill; it comes with a special brand of confidence, one that fulfills a fundamental human need.’ That fundamental itch, once experienced, remains with you and becomes who you are. I’ve used it to protect myself, those dear to me, and others throughout my life. Reading his book and paying attention to both the written word and its context will impart confirmation of areas that you may need to improve. Sam writes, ‘The reality is that you control the most important situational factors. You have to understand those factors and consciously never relinquish control of them. By understanding and accepting your own power, deterrence is not only possible; it’s probable.’ From Sam’s mouth to God’s ear. I’ve known Sam for a very long time. He walks the walk. Live Ready is highly recommended."

—LCDR Larry B. Lambert USNR (Operational SEAL Teams)/Supervising Investigator and Task Force Commander/Clandestine Service Officer

"How do you minimize the likelihood of becoming an unprepared victim of violence? Read this book! Live Ready is an excellent guide to assessing, reacting, and responding to perceived threats. As the author states, ‘In the swimming pool of life, there are no lifeguards.’ Each person is inherently responsible for their own safety as well as their family. Sam Rosenberg takes the reader through an A-to-Z examination of how to be prepared for and to recognize a threat, while utilizing techniques in avoiding a violent encounter. This an essential read for anyone interested in executive protection or personal safety and vigilance."

—Mike Roche, retired U.S. Secret Service, and author of Mass Killers: How You Can Identify Workplace, School, or Public Killers Before They Strike.

"Live Ready is an enlightened read for both the average Joe and seasoned fighter. It reminds us all how vulnerable we are in today’s society, and it helps us navigate the little things that are often the important things: Awareness, diffusing situations, and common-sense practices for being safe and living ready!"

—Rick Steigerwald, Pennsylvania State Athletic Commissioner

"Live Ready is an owner’s manual for personal security, a must read for anyone interested in learning how to protect themselves and their loved ones. The timing is critical considering the increased incidence of violence in our world. The book is well-written, related in an accessible and easy-to-understand style that uses the power of real-world situations to help the reader better understand and apply critical principles. Importantly, Live Ready integrates scientific and verified third-party statistics to support the author’s expertise and experience."

—Sandra Gramling, Behavioral Healthcare Professional

"Live Ready could literally save your life! I’ve been fortunate to have known Sam for over 20 years, and he is dedicated to helping us be prepared for an event we all hope will never happen in our lifetime. Sam worked with me, my family, everyone else in my life that could be helped by Sam’s teachings. He is an Angel!"

—Bob Ford, Former PGA Professional at Oakmont Country Club and Seminole Golf Club

"In this dangerous world, Live Ready could save your life. Read it, read it again, and then share it with those who are most important to you. Live Ready provides a roadmap for those seeking to take accountability for their personal protection."

—Elaine Conte, President & CEO, Alston Machine Company

"Oh, this is such a great book, a vitally important book. Written by a master’s master in his field, Sam Rosenberg’s easy-to-understand, conversational approach will make it seem like he is right there next to you as you read his words. His teachings and methods will absolutely save lives. Yours might be one of them.

So please, read it slowly and carefully to fully understand all the techniques and information. I promise you that this book will change your life for the better, and make you a safer person in a very unsafe world. My great wish is that I could snap my fingers and magically get Live Ready into the hands of every single American in our great country."

—Richard Busch, JPFO Ambassador, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

"Violent crime has a profound effect on society. There is no doubt that we are seeing more of it now than we have in decades. Yet when someone is in imminent danger, it is mind boggling how many bystanders do absolutely nothing to help, not even to call 911 … And the police most often cannot be there in time to help anybody. So, we must all be our own first responders.

None of this is meant to frighten you into hiding under your bed. Rather, it is an invitation to empower yourself to learn to live your life more fully and freely, safely and resourcefully.

Live Ready teaches us that each individual has a responsibility, a social compact, to better protect themselves. We are not helpless. We can learn new skills and how to utilize them. With a thoughtful reading of this book, you will be better equipped to stop (as Sam calls them) ‘the Bad Guys.’ It just may save your life, and the lives of those you love."

—Cynthia Busch, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Musician, Retired

I saw combat during my 20 years in the Marine Corps, and I’ve had countless confrontations in bars, traffic, and other random situations (despite the fact I am not a hothead). This book both clarified things I have experienced and filled in critical gaps in my knowledge base. If I had access to these concepts when I was 20, I could have faced life with greater confidence and had far less ‘discovery learning’ in dangerous situations. Now, I can empower my family with these vital skills, at a time it will serve them for life! Thank you for writing it, Sam.

—Dan Rubel, USMC, Retired

"As a proud military veteran, someone with an accomplished law enforcement and academic career, and as the founder of CSI, Corporate Security and Investigations, I take recommendations very seriously simply because they are a reflection of my name and reputation. In this case, not only do I not hesitate to recommend Sam Rosenberg’s book, Live Ready, I am proud and honored to do so. I can personally attest to the fact that Live Ready is a manifestation of Sam’s life’s work not only in the military but in the venues of law enforcement, academia, and business, where I have personally relied on Sam’s expertise in every venue to deliver to our clients the very essence of the material in this work that everyone should read and absorb.

Sam, I thank you for making this product available to the general public."

—Lou Gentile, Founder of CSI

LIVE READY

Copyright © 2023 by Sam Rosenberg

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-960378-13-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-960378-14-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-960378-15-6 (eBook)

1st edition

Pittsburgh, PA

Design by Anna Hall

For Chrissy, Ruby, and Samson

LIVE READY

A Guide to Protecting

Yourself in an

Uncertain World

by Sam Rosenberg

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I have worked

for more than twenty years in close protection services, an industry that holds client confidentiality in extremely high regard. As such, while the stories and anecdotes contained in this book are all true, I have altered the names of my clients and other identifying details to protect their confidentiality and better ensure their safety and the safety of their families.

You will also find that I have taken the liberty of using the term Bad Guy to describe the people who commit the kinds of violent crime addressed in this book. A few caveats for this catch-all term:

1. Though it contains the word Bad, this does not mean that everyone who commits an act of violence is a bad person. People commit violence for many reasons, and certainly not all violent acts are committed by bad people. I use this term for simplicity’s sake to generally define those who would commit predatory or targeted violence against the innocent.

2. Just because the term contains the word Guy, it certainly does not mean that every perpetrator of violence is a guy, as you will see in some of the case studies explored in this book. As with Bad, I use this word for simplicity’s sake, as the majority of violent perpetrators, both nationally and internationally, are in fact men.

3. In keeping with the above, this book often uses masculine pronouns to describe those perpetrators. This is for simplicity, convenience, and consistency. Sometimes the more general they or them fits the context of the discussion, but other times, singular pronouns are more efficient.

In the end, the term simply refers to someone who would attempt to harm you, whether they are a professional criminal or a first-time offender, and no matter what their gender. The central goal of this book is to teach you everything you need to know to identify these Bad Guys so that you can avoid them, or defend yourself against them, in any setting and scenario you might encounter in this dangerous world.

Lastly, it’s true that notoriety is the fuel that feeds the fire for those who commit mass homicide. That said, the decision to use the perpetrators’ real names in this book was a deliberate one. It is a decision I struggled with, as I have always been a proponent of never mentioning these names and feeding this fire. Ultimately, I decided to do so here as I believe that the risks are outweighed by the learning value gained through a frank discussion of these incidents, both in terms of accuracy and as a matter of record.

FOREWORD

By Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

Sam Rosenberg’s

Live Ready is the best book I have read in many, many years. And I read a lot of books. I usually read very quickly, but every once in a while, I encounter the rare book that requires me to go back and read it again, slowly and carefully. Live Ready was one of those. It is a vital, valid, and invaluable resource for those who desire to protect themselves and their loved ones in these violent times.

At one level, Live Ready is a powerful personal tale—a coming-of-age story, a warrior’s journey as gripping and well written as any novel. From the first few pages, when our protagonist has a gun shoved in his face, you can’t help but find yourself identifying with the narrator. But unlike a work of fiction, this story is true!

Most importantly, on another level, this book delivers a treasure trove of essential and immediately applicable lessons on how to live a life of readiness, and how to survive and thrive in a violent world. These lessons are masterfully communicated by Sam Rosenberg, a world-class warrior, trainer, protector, and in his words, a fanatical student of the craft. (And we can now add master warrior-wordsmith to the list!)

Sam’s observation about the fear and insecurity we can observe among even the rich and powerful is simply superb:

I came to realize that this uncertainty originated from a sense of insecurity in their ability to protect themselves and their families on a primal level. They had achieved financial security long ago. Most lived in safe neighborhoods and for the most part were well protected by society and the people around them. But there was that nagging sensation in the back of their minds that, physically, someone could take it all away from them in a heartbeat.

This is the sheep vs. the sheepdog, the predator vs. the prey, in a way that I have never seen it put before. A life of full contentment is indeed about being able to Live Ready so that you can live fully and completely.

Much as we think of the heroes and lawmen of the Wild West, future generations will look back in awe upon the warriors who rose to the challenges of this era. Yet, while the violence of those bygone days is mostly a Hollywood myth, the violence of today is very real. I call these violent times we live in a Warrior Renaissance, and with Live Ready, Sam Rosenberg proves that he is one of the great minds to usher us through.

Now more than ever, we all need this book. But before we dive deeper into why I believe this is true, you must first understand some critical concepts related to what feels like (and in fact is) a huge uptick in violence, both in the US and globally. It’s easy to read or watch the news and feel as if the situation is grim. When we examine the raw numbers, we see that it is in fact much, much worse than it looks.

Medical Technology Is Holding Down the Murder Rate

The annual increase in homicides is a key factor in assessing the degree of violence in our society. At the micro level of an individual attack, or even at the macro level of national homicide rates, the number of dead people is the measurement by which we typically judge the problem.

But there’s a major flaw in this data: the murder rate underrepresents the rate of violent crime simply because medical technology is saving more lives than ever before.¹

1 In response to this flaw, there is a temptation to use the aggravated assault data instead of the murder data, but it is too easy to fudge the figures on ag assault. Any seasoned cop will tell you that we can make the ag assault rate say whatever we want it to say, simply by shifting that magic line between ag assault and simple assault. It’s very much like grade inflation in our schools. Murder offers far better data to draw from because there is no imaginary line. Dead is dead, and it’s harder to fudge those numbers.

In 2002, Anthony Harris, along with a team of scholars from the University of Massachusetts and Harvard, published their landmark research in the journal Homicide Studies. They concluded that advances in medical technology between 1960 and 1999 cut the reported murder rate to a third—and in some instances, even to a quarter—of what it would have been otherwise. The leaps and bounds of lifesaving technology that have emerged in the decades since have had a similar impact on the ability of first responders, medical professionals, and even everyday citizens to save the lives of victims of violence, thus preventing ever more murders.

Consider, for instance, that almost all first responders (and many civilians) now carry tourniquets, while twenty years ago, this was unheard of. If a cop slaps on a tourniquet and saves a crime victim’s life, they have prevented a murder. Some medical experts believe that tourniquets alone may have cut the murder rate in half in just the past decade. And that’s only one small piece of the astounding medical technology being applied every day, saving lives and holding down the body count while also concealing just how violent and destructive our nation has become.

Everyone understands the concept of inflation-adjusted dollars. When we finally start reporting medically adjusted murders, then we will begin to appreciate just how desperately, tragically bad the situation has become. For every murder we report, an ever-increasing number of our citizens might have had their lives saved, and yet they remain physically maimed and scarred, emotionally crippled and traumatized by the violence they experienced. These are the many crimes that don’t cross the threshold into murder simply because medical technology saved the victim’s life.

So what are the real numbers? By Harris’s findings, we can deduce that we must multiply reported homicides in the 1990s by a factor of about 3.5 if we hope to compare the numbers accurately with those reported during the 1960s. A similar dynamic is in play between the 1990s and the 2020s.

Even before we consider the medically adjusted murder rate, the recent annual increase in homicides in the United States is unsettling. In 2020, it was over 30 percent. The worst we had ever seen previously happened way back in the 1960s, when we saw a 12 percent annual increase. But that comparison completely breaks down when you remember the factor of 3.5 between reported homicides and medically prevented homicides during the period between 1960 and 1990. If we can assume a similar factor between 1990 and today, then what happened in 2020 was nearly ten times more violent than anything we have ever seen before, and 2021 (up another 4 percent) was even worse.

When we think of the matter in these terms, it’s clear that we all need to learn how to Live Ready; it’s a dangerous, violent world out there. Today, that need is demonstrably, irrefutably, orders-of-magnitude greater than the reported homicide rate would have you believe.

We Are Getting Good at Stopping These Crimes!

Across America, as I train law enforcement and school safety professionals, I hear a consistent message: You never hear about the ones we stop. Our society in general, and our law enforcement community in particular, have become very good at stopping many of these horrific mass murders. In schools and workplaces, we are no longer in denial (with some notable, tragic exceptions), and we often take effective action before the crime occurs. (What kind of action is effective? Funny you should ask, because the answers are in large part what this wonderful book is all about!)

I believe that today the odds are very good that the Littleton, Colorado, school shooters would have been caught before they committed their massacre at Columbine High School.

This much is clear: we are getting better at spotting and stopping these killers ahead of time. And when attempted mass murders do occur, rapid and effective response by police (and, increasingly, by citizens) has been a key dynamic in the equation of life and death.

Even still, school homicide rates are exploding. And the number of attacks is also increasing.

The National Center for Education Statistics’ 2021 Violent Deaths at School report² tells us that after a modern low of eleven reported school shootings in the 2009–10 school year,³ the rate trended upward to thirty-six in 2016–17 before climbing rapidly to an astonishing seventy-five separate shooting incidents in both 2018–19 and 2019–20. The final year is particularly troubling because schools were closed for a large portion of that year due to the pandemic.

2 National Center for Education Statistics. (2022). Violent Deaths at School and Away from School and School Shootings. Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.

3 Roughly half of these reported incidents were to people who presented with injuries only, while the rest were categorized as shootings with deaths.

This Is Not Normal. It Is Not Business as Usual

Yes, there have always been mass murders. Historically, they were most often motivated by war, religious or tribal conflict, or ideology. But the lone wolf massacres like those we hear about almost every day in the news are profoundly rare by historical comparison.

In my own research, I have tracked mass murders committed by juveniles in their schools. Until recently, such an event was unprecedented in human history. In my book Assassination Generation,⁴ I compiled a list of school massacres committed by juveniles (up through 2014), and a few things immediately stood out.

4 Assassination Generation: Video Games, Aggression, and the Psychology of Killing. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, Kristine Paulsen, and Katie Miserany. Little, Brown and Company. November 15, 2016.

First, over the course of 5,000 years of recorded history, 500 years of gunpowder weapons, and 150 years of repeating firearms, the first time a juvenile committed a mass murder in their school was in 1975. Today, massacres and the threat of such crimes are a reality more than once per week in the United States. But the other startling discovery to emerge from my research is that they occur in nearly every nation on the planet.

During the period studied, these murders occurred in Argentina, Canada, Finland, Germany, Russia, and Thailand. The first (again, the very first that I can find in human history) occurred in Canada, while a seventeen-year-old student in Germany set the all-time record number of murders for a mass-killing juvenile (and not just in a school, but anywhere). The two Columbine killers murdered thirteen people between them, but the killer in Germany gunned down fifteen by himself. ⁵ In 2018, in Russia, twenty were murdered and seventy wounded by an eighteen-year-old perpetrator on a college campus. In China, we have seen a series of knife massacres across the years, with horrendous body counts in schools, kindergartens, and even nurseries.

5 None of these totals include the killers when they commit suicide as part of the act. Also, in 2002, a nineteen-year-old, expelled high school student murdered sixteen people at his former school in Erfurt, Germany, and an eighteen-year-old student murdered nine in his school in Tuusula, Finland, in 2007. Because these killers were over the age of eighteen, however, they don’t qualify for the juvenile mass murder hit parade.

Thus, this book and Sam Rosenberg’s work are not just vital information for America. Around the world, people are asking the question that Sam answers in the pages to come: How can we be safe in these violent times?

This breakdown of law and order, the systematic erosion of the fabric of our civilization, is the single most important issue facing us today. And the most horrific part is that most people don’t even know what is happening!

As Sam so superbly puts it,

In a dangerous world, you have two choices. You can either pull the veils of denial back over your eyes and return to the myths of helplessness and randomness, or you can choose to become dangerous yourself, own your personal security, master this step on the hierarchy of self-actualization, and Live Ready.

What Are the New Factors?

If we’re going to figure out why these disturbing trends are occurring, we must think like a scientist, think like a detective, and ask the vital question, "What are the new factors that were never there before?"

Here, too, Sam has made a singularly vital contribution to our understanding. His work tracing the societal transition from serial killers to spree killers covers ground I have never seen touched upon before. And his explanation as to the new factors is brilliant:

This is not to suggest that you can’t have some rotten apples; rather, it is to illuminate that the cases where a seemingly normal kid devolves into a monstrous mass killer always come from a place where that sense of personal responsibility and morality is absent, usually in their early upbringing. Kids who are allowed to play [violent video games] and submit to this culture without moral and personal oversight have the potential to develop violent tendencies, and even then, those tendencies are not enough on their own to make them killers. There is a massive difference between being systematically desensitized to violence and being capable of murder. The latter requires intense underdevelopment, character disorder, narcissism, paranoia, and a malignant lack of personal responsibility.

So yes, conditions in our society and culture are making it more possible for people to evolve into killers of this nature, but what makes them killers is a (thankfully) rare psychological cocktail dominated by intense paranoia and this specific brand of narcissism.

Put this way, the profile of a mass killer starts to sound similar in many ways to the profile of a serial killer. Both are mission oriented. Both take pleasure in violence. Both are ultimately seeking notoriety from a society that they believe has ignored or mistreated them. They are mad, and they want everyone to know why. Just as importantly, they are so narcissistic that they actually believe everyone in the world will care.

To this, I can respond with the ultimate compliment from one author to another: I wish I had written those words!

In my books, encyclopedia entries, and scholarly journal articles, I have repeatedly written that violent media, video game mass murder simulators, and the fame given to killers by our media are just the new factors. No matter what we do about them, all the old problems are still there. And those problems extend beyond just the body count; they have an immeasurable impact on society at large.

The Psychological Trauma of Violence

A monstrous mass murder by a single individual can create more psychosocial trauma than countless deaths by disease. In its section on PTSD, the DSM-5 (the bible of psychology and psychiatry) tells us that, whenever the cause of trauma is human in nature (such as assault, torture, or rape) the degree of trauma is usually more severe and long lasting.

I often say to my audiences, You tell me: Is there a difference between a tornado hitting your house and putting your family in the hospital, and criminals breaking into your house and beating your family into a hospital stay?

Most people would say that there is all the difference in the world.

Millions die from disease every day, and it has little impact on our behavior. But one serial killer or serial rapist can paralyze a city. And one horrendous mass murder can stun a nation.

On 9/11, terrorists murdered 3,000 of our citizens. Our stock market crashed, our way of life changed, and we invaded two nations in response. That same year, over 30,000 Americans died in traffic accidents, and nothing changed—because they were accidents.

The overall societal harm of violent crime can be far greater than the harm caused by disease or other deaths by natural causes.

To whatever degree you were concerned about the impact of violence upon you and your loved ones, today, that concern should be amplified, focused, and equipped with an understanding of the psychologically corrosive and destructive impact that a violent incident can force upon you and your loved ones.

Which brings us back to the book you hold in your hand. I know of no other book like it! Amazingly well written, informative, and empowering, this is essential reading for every citizen in these violent times.

Live Ready is the natural successor to my book On Combat.⁶ It truly delves into the science of this vital subject, focusing from the general (the psychology and physiology of