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Ian T. Mena-Wieland

Book Review: Surviving the Unthinkable by Tim Larkin

Updated: Jun 14, 2020


Tim Larkin, the author, is a self defense instructor that has spent a great deal of this life learning and developing unarmed self defense techniques. His company, Target Focus Training, offers in person as well as digital training.


Surviving the Unthinkable is a mindset and skills book designed to inform people about the potential risks of violent criminals. This book is specifically geared toward women, and it uses examples that are specific to women. Larkin uses many individual cases of how people prevailed and failed at the task of identification of a threat, as well as the actual defensive techniques. His distinction between antisocial violence and asocial violence is similar to the work done by Rory Miller of Chiron Training. The difference is that antisocial violence is when someone still acknowledges the fact that there are social rules, whereas asocial violence is when someone sees the world as not having a set of rules that they have to adhere to. Antisocial offenders are often the type that are simply trying to assert their place in the hierarchy. Asocial predators see their needs as the only thing that matters and they simply do not care about anybody else.


This sort of distinction is important to understand, as we have to be aware of how the criminal mind works if we wish to combat it.

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