Situational Awareness During the Holidays
Awareness Is Your First Line of Defense
BLUF
The holiday season creates predictable vulnerabilities due to crowded public spaces, disrupted routines, and widespread distraction. Maintaining situational awareness during this period is one of the simplest and most effective ways to reduce risk, protect your family, and avoid becoming an easy target.
Situational Awareness During the Holidays
The holiday season is meant to be a time for family, friends, and loved ones. It is a time when people slow down, gather together, and focus inward. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most vulnerable times of the year for Americans.
Travel increases. Public spaces are crowded. Routines are disrupted. Attention drops. Phones come out. Heads go down.
The Threat Environment Is Not on Pause
At the same time, recent events tell a different story than the one most people are paying attention to. A National Guardsman attacked. U.S. soldiers targeted overseas in Syria. An attack in Australia, a Western ally. These incidents were carried out by radical jihadists and received little sustained coverage by the national media. That lack of attention does not reduce the risk. It increases complacency.
This is not about fear. It is about awareness.
Crowds, Chaos, and Opportunity
The days leading up to Christmas are some of the busiest of the year. Christmas Eve alone is one of the highest volume shopping days in the country. Stores are packed. Parking lots are full. Highways are congested. People are rushed, distracted, and mentally checked out. These conditions create opportunity, not just for criminals, but for anyone looking to exploit crowds and predictability.
When Vulnerability Shifts to the Home
Then Christmas Day arrives. Most people are home. Families are piled together in one location. Schedules are known. Movement patterns are obvious. That does not mean you should live in fear inside your own home, but it does mean understanding that vulnerability shifts from public spaces to private ones.
Preparedness is about recognizing those shifts.
If you rely on our briefings to stay ahead of what’s coming, upgrade today. Your support keeps Dead Drop Intel independent and our intelligence flowing - no filters, no sponsors, no censorship.
Why Situational Awareness Matters Most
If you want to be better prepared this holiday season, I linked a video in the description outlining five practical steps. One of the most important is situational awareness, because it costs nothing and works everywhere.
Situational awareness starts with understanding where you are and what is normal for that environment. A mall, an airport, a grocery store, or a holiday market all have baseline behaviors. Most people are shopping, browsing, moving with purpose, and interacting with products or staff.
When someone deviates from that baseline, it should register.
Behavior Over Appearance
This is not about profiling people. It is about observing behavior.
Pay attention to individuals who are not shopping or moving with purpose. People pacing back and forth without a clear reason. People standing idle while watching others instead of merchandise. People who appear nervous, agitated, or fixated on entrances, exits, or security personnel. These behaviors are not automatic threats, but they are anomalies worth noticing.
Distraction Is the Enemy
The fastest way to miss these indicators is distraction.
Cell phones are one of the biggest killers of situational awareness. When your eyes are locked on a screen, your brain is not processing the environment around you. You lose reaction time and awareness. Simply keeping your head up and your phone down creates an immediate advantage.
Small Habits Create Time and Options
Pay attention to where you are. Identify exits without obsessing over them. Keep track of where your family is in relation to you. Notice sudden changes in noise, movement, or energy in a space. These are small habits that give you time and options if something goes wrong.
Trust Your Instincts
Trust your intuition. If something feels off, do not rationalize it away because you do not want to appear rude or overreact. Leaving a store, changing locations, or creating distance costs you nothing. Staying because you are worried about social discomfort can cost you everything.
Preparedness Protects Joy
The holidays should be about joy, not anxiety. Preparedness does not ruin that. It protects it.
Do not be an easy target. Pay attention. Stay present. Take care of your people.
If you want the full breakdown, the five tips are linked in the YouTube video in the description.
Godspeed,
Mike Glover
Founder
Get the POC-1 Ultras for only $399 for two radios and no annual fee for LTE network service for the life of the radios. This price is only for the first 1,000 units sold. After that they’ll be $1,140 a pair, and $29 to $65 a year for LTE service.
Get them HERE.
Mike, this resonates strongly with how I’ve been thinking about awareness lately — not as vigilance or fear, but as a way to preserve judgment and choice, especially in crowded or disrupted moments like the holidays.
I shared a companion piece today that reframes situational awareness as something that should steady you, not exhaust you — and includes a practical guide I chose to gift publicly for this season: https://thebenthalls.substack.com/p/awareness-is-not-fear
Appreciate how you emphasize that preparedness protects joy, rather than diminishing it. That distinction matters!
Thak you Mike. Good stuff we all need to remember.