The Discipline of “What If” Thinking

Most defensive encounters are not announced ahead of time. You don’t get a countdown. You don’t get a rehearsal. Instead, you get surprised.

Imagine you turn around and there’s a gun already pointed at your head.

You’re carrying concealed. Do you draw on a drawn gun? Do you create a distraction and sprint? Do you comply and hope the threat is only after property? Or are you about to be moved to a second crime scene where compliance becomes a death sentence?

What if you’re in a movie theater and shots erupt in the auditorium next to you?

What if you’re home and someone kicks the door in?

What if you’re walking down the street and someone closes distance fast with a knife?

These are not far-fetched scenarios. They are statistically rare—but plausible. And if they happen, you will have milliseconds to process moral, legal, and tactical realities all at once.

You will not rise to the occasion. You will default to your level of preparation. The body cannot go where the mind hasn’t gone already.

These scenarios are complex. They involve moral, legal, and tactical considerations all at once. And you won’t have the luxury of slow, careful analysis when it happens. You’ll have seconds. Maybe less.

If you’ve never mentally explored those possibilities before, your odds of making a good decision drop fast, but if you’ve already walked through them a thousand times in your mind, your response becomes far more deliberate.

It’s really hard to think through all the options before you and select the one that offers the highest likelihood for success—success being: you eliminated the threat, were not harmed, no one else was harmed, and you didn’t break any laws.

You’re going to have to deal with the moral, legal, and tactical obligations in a split second, and again, it’s really, really hard to be to process all of it while your reeling from a violent encounter, when milliseconds might mean the difference between life and death.

What is a “What If” Game?

“What If” games are situational. You don’t play “What If” games about fighting a war in another country unless you are able to be deployed to that country to fight an actual war. I’m not saying don’t daydream about conquest and glory, that’s just not this.

“What If” games are played wherever you are. If you are out on date night, the “What If” game is confined to your surroundings, the people around you, and your gear and ability. The game’s scenario is mandated by your physical location and what you have on your person, while keep the limits of your skill realistic.

One more example, if you’re at home watching a movie with the family, then the game might look like this:

I’m sitting on the couch, my gun is in the safe, my wife and kids are with me, and someone breaks down the back door. What do I do?

Then, you take the time, while you have it, to roleplay out that scenario to yourself (not out loud because you’re supposed to be enjoying a movie with your family). Once you work through a satisfactory solution to that fictional scenario, you replay it, except this time, the intruder comes in through the front door or he’s got a gun or he’s got an accomplice with him.

After enough repetitions, you’ve created a mental foundation of what you would do should you be faced with any of those scenarios. The more “What If” games you play, the more scenarios you cover, the more scenarios you cover, the higher change you should have of surviving them should they happen.

Below, I’ll outline the rules of this practice in more detail.

Rule One: Be Realistic

This is not the time for a cinematic fantasy.

If your mental scenario turns into a beautifully choreographed, slow-motion gunfighting kata with perfect movement and flawless execution, you’re lying to yourself. The more “sexy” the solution feels, the less likely it is to work.

Real solutions are usually simple and brutally effective. Create space. Move to cover. Get off the X. Draw if justified. Cut angles deliberately. Break contact when you can. When in doubt, simple wins.

Rule Two: Be Specific

If your plan is “get behind cover,” that’s not a plan.

Which cover? The brick wall? The truck? The pillar? The end of the aisle? And what happens to the angles once you move?

You may turn to make your tactical retreat behind cover, and the bad guy, like a predator seeing the back of its prey, lunges after you. You’ve not realized it, but the moment you reached your cover you thought was going to give you an advantage of observation and protection has actually expired and now you’re going to die because you made a bad tactical decision by not anticipating what your enemy would do.

A piece of cover that protects you from one angle may expose you to another. The moment you relocate, the geometry of the fight changes. The threat moves. You move. The battlefield is fluid.

Sometimes the first piece of cover only buys you a second and a half before you must either engage, leapfrog to the next position, or reposition entirely.

What if games only work when you force yourself to think concretely about terrain, angles, and movement. Be specific.

Rule Three: No Collateral Damage

You are responsible for every bullet until it something stops it. Everything behind your target. To the left. To the right. Beyond the wall. Through the glass. Everything.

Even a justified defensive act can become tragic if you fail to account for innocent people in the background. That responsibility doesn’t go away because you were scared or rushed.

Your what if scenarios must include bystanders. They must include the reality that bullets penetrate. They must include restraint as part of the solution.

Stopping the threat while preserving innocent life is the standard.

Rule Four: Be Cool

This is preparation, not paranoia.

You don’t need a thousand-yard stare on date night. You don’t need to ignore your wife while scanning every exit like Jason Bourne. You don’t need to dork everyone out.

For me, these scenarios flash quickly. I see angles. I process options. Then it’s gone.

That’s the goal.

A tactician sees the world in real time—angles, distance, movement—but doesn’t become socially disconnected or obsessive.

Be aware. Be capable. And be normal.

It’s Not About Winning Every Scenario

There is rarely a perfect answer.

Every option is a gamble. Some gambles are better than others. The goal is not to craft an invincible plan. The goal is to improve your odds by having already thought through the variables of all that may be around you. Remember the game changes wherever you are. It’s an endless tactical exercise that you need to be playing as often as you can. Because when milliseconds matter, prior mental reps can make the difference between freezing and acting with clarity.

Remember, Train Hard. Train Smart. And build the habit of disciplined “what if” thinking so that when reality forces a decision, you already know what to do.