Supercenter Scenario

H

Heist

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After a brief foray into your town's new Walmart supercenter to pick up some rechargeable batteries, you are about to check into one of the registers near the set of doors next to the food section, on the right hand side of the store if you were at the back looking out. The immediate area you are in isn't any more crowded than normal, if anything the foot traffic through has lessened for the moment and there are a few people ahead of you in line, positioning you to eye the front page article in Weekly World News about Bill Clinton's alien baby which will be Hillary's running mate.

Suddenly you hear a gunshot and screams at the entrance. A man is yelling and screaming, like a psycho on a shooting spree or a very deranged robber. He punctuates his sentences with random gunshots. Your view is blocked by checkout aisle dividers. Two or three have gone off since the first shot and you are ducking down and looking around as you feel the adrenaline dump into your body. Screams are filling the store and people are panicking, the cashier for your lane is huddled down on her mat with her hands over her ears.

No one has done anything yet and you don't see store security, for all you know some of them just got wasted. Fighting your shaking hands you pull the 4" sharp and heavy sheath knife from your belt clip. You have no firearms, only the knife.

The extremely violent or crazy man in question is moving through the main aisles of the store, coming around the checkout lanes and heading toward the other exit down the main 'front aisle' of the store. You know this because he is snarling and spitting out obscenities constantly, and his boots thump.

He can't see you, but he'll be able to in a few moments when he passes the lane you are in.

Alternate scenario: you defy the confinements of this post and whip out your trusty handgun and shoot the guy anyway. Aside from a few interesting ideas on walmart checkout lane tactics, this is already a given that someone with a gun who has moderate training will have a high chance of winning against an armed attacker if he initiates a violent counterattack.

Bonus alternate scenario: the man in question instead of shouting curse words is repeatedly yelling "Allahu akbar!".
 
^^^Yeah, been eyeing this post for awhile. I'd put the knife away, and try to look inconspicuous until I could find an exit. (Given the scenario.)
 
That's easy,(kinda...),I'd be haulin' ass for the furthest exit,using whatever cover I could get,running as fast as I could.Of course,I'd never go to Wal Mart without a firearm anyway,so... ;)
 
It would be a terrifying situation. None of us are ninjas and I doubt that most people would take on someone with a gun armed only with an edged weapon, and would also be reluctant to not try to do something knowing that people are being killed by the minute.

I would probably run like hell for the sporting goods counter, combined with 911. That is the only realistic option aside from an attack from behind which you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt would kill them swiftly.

Suppose the employees heard the chaos and were loading up there- if any one of them were of the mind to. How fast can you get a couple shotguns from locked up behind glass to locked, cocked and loaded?

Would you venture out to try to get a distance shot with an unfamiliar weapon to save more lives, or hunker behind the counter talking to the dispatcher?
 
In a real life situation the circumstances are ever changing and evolving. An initial decision to react in a specific way is based on a snapshot of the circumstances at that instant. A specific decision of how to react could be a mute point two seconds later due to the unpredictable evolution of events. For the most part humans will only have two reactions, to fight or flee. Beyond that, decisions on how to accomplish either are made second by second as events evolve.

Being proficient with the weapon of choice is always a priority. So is training in tactics. Having a very minor plan of action when presented with a given situation has some value. Perhaps the best of plans, is to have no real plan at all, and to be open to changing a plan based on the events you're presented with. Rather, have a plan to be flexible and adaptive to a situation as events unfold. To much mental imprinting of the mind with specific actions to contrived scenarios, or fantasy, is a powerful form of training and it can have negative effects. Have confidence that your training in the use of your weapon and the application of tactics will be automatic. Condition you mind to let your training and skill support you, then you will be free to make moment by moment decisions about what to do and how to accomplish it. Be it fight or flee.

There is no way to accurately speculate, or know what I would do if presented with the above scenario. So, I won't even consider it.
 
I know there is a back door somewhere, where the heck is it. Dang fat fingered the phone while running - "911, uh err no you got the wrong number this is 912"
 
Use your "sharp and heavy sheath knife" to open a bag of those mini oreos they have cause thats about all it will be good for................then hide



911......pray.......bring gun next trip.......... :D


BTW....Sigmatic, well done!
 
I am sure someone already said 'dont go to a gunfight armed with a knife'. In the first place, why are you running around without your pistol? Secondly, why have you not hauled A out the back door? Silly.
 
If you are going to get one of the sporting goods guns (which I don’t think is a bad idea) you better keep in mind that if a police team does an unknown entry to the back door or something you better be ready to drop that gun quick and lay prone, or they might shoot you on accident. Remember that the Police might not have a description of the guy; all they know is that he is killing civilians.

It would be hard for me not to want to do something. This is not some robber that is there to steal, he is there to kill. I think there is something in side most of us that do not like our life styles threatened by maniacs like this. If you are just Joe Citizen, you have no duty to act, but there is that part of us that will want this guy stopped now, not ten fifteen or twenty minutes from now. But if you do not act, you flee instead or just stay hunkered down and call 911 to give the best information you can that is darn good too. One thing Police will need at a time like this is not vigilantes but information, the more the better.

But in the scenario given if our guys hands are shaking to pull the knife then getting a gun is a bad idea making a bad situation worse. Like deguello said should have pulled the cell before the knife.
 
Suppose the employees heard the chaos and were loading up there- if any one of them were of the mind to. How fast can you get a couple shotguns from locked up behind glass to locked, cocked and loaded?
Click to expand...

My CA Wal-Mart does not carry firearms of any kind anymore. And I can assure you that even if they did, the simple folks working in the sporting goods dept. there wouldn't even know what to do. It takes nearly 10 minutes (although I rarely do) to buy a box of bullets there. They ALWAYS have to page someone to get a key............wrong key.............another page............."um, what is it you wanted again".............ran out of what I needed in the first place.

All the while been standing there waiting for the guy before me to buy ammo. :rolleyes: :mad:
 
Personally, I am not in a hurry to shoot anybody!!! I don't fantasize about wasting crazed robbers or terroritsts or people wearing a heavy jacket in a subway. I teach all my students to diffuse and dis-engage...run!! Billy Jack, Rambo and James Bond are fictional movie characters, it worries me that movies have made arm chair vigilantes out of sooo many people. My true feelings are that, in most of these ridiculous "Scenario" scenes...the majority (not all) of the brave posters...would probably soil themselves and try to fit into the smallest crawlspace they could find, perhaps even getting themselves killed while trying to play Hero, or worse yet, they shoot some innocent while trying to be a Hero...which is probably the most likely outcome, unless you are training on a regular basis...not stationary, popping off at paper targets (that don't shoot back) at 7-15-25yrds! I mean the moving and shooting, reloading and ducking and shuckin', rollin' on the ground kinda training...oh, and being lethally accurate too, I am afraid that you are terribly under trained for Wal-mart warfare, where there are people running about, places to hide and shoot, not to mention the highly adrenaline pumped, police officers that will soon be arriving on a "shots fired" scene...I would not want to even be holding a sharp stick when they arrive!
If you had time to crouch down, look around the store at the aisle dividers, listen to half a dozen shots, pull a knife, take a look at the cashier, asses the panicked people running about...you had PLENTY of time to cut out of there. Why be a statistic...or add to them.
Are people this eager to take a life? I am not sure if I should fear this scenario taking place...as much as the people who come up with them.
 
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Whoa. Someone needs to take a chill pill.

I was sitting in line after grudgingly funding the chicoms (don't shop walmart. please.) to get some emergency drinking water, and I wondered what would happen if a ROPer / jihadi / crazy man walked in shooting. I posted it as an unusual scenario where someone just has a knife precisely to avoid the mall-ninja fantasy type responses.

And all the stuff I described, people notice in a half second or so.

I'm not eager to take a life. I'm eager to avoid situations where my skin might get perforated. Notice that I said I'd probably call 9/11 while running for cover, although in that location you would have a slim chance of making it into the bowels of the store without being noticed.

Killing is the last thing I want to do. I don't think or fantasize about it. I'm sure that most people are with me there, and I'm also sure that most people would want to do at least something beyond 'being a good witness'. Use a commanding voice and herd people toward the exits, make it to sporting goods and break out the shotguns, take up an ambush position in housewares, go out the back door and keep that area safe, crawl under the clothes racks until you can see the guy and keep the SWAT team updated as to his exact location (remember security will be watching this guy on the cameras and advising the police pretty well), do something.

It's just an interesting and plausible scenario. I predict within the next five years there will be at least four big-box related shootings, with at least one having no more motivation than "crazy man wants to kill people".
 
Hmm... having only brought a knife to an obvious gun fight, I'd be gathering up as many people as I could and hauling @ss for the nearest exit, then dialling 9-1-1 ASAP.

I'm not sure about the addition of the 'allahu' part though - a crazy with a gun is a crazy with a gun no matter his political, religious, or interstellar affiliation.
 
A friend of mine once said, "You can talk all night about 'what if.'"

If and when it happens to you, let us know what you did.
 
I would probably try to sneak through the checkout lane, around the people ahead of me, and see whether anyone got shot, or if he was just shooting out lights. If nobody got hurt, I might just trail the guy through the store. That is very easy to do in a Walmart. If he had killed anyone, or if he starts killing, then I would hunt him, Predator-style. I have no dependants, some training in knife fighting, hunting experience, and an over-developed sense of duty. I might make for sporting goods, but I would have to run around the store, as the guy would be directly between me and it. And if the police interrupt my stalk/hunt, sheath the knife, and huddle like a victim in some out-of-the-way spot.
 
The only thing I can do with a knife is open stuff. Zero knife training. Run/Hide/Call911. describe suspect.


".....if, the only word a thousand letters long"
 
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