As mentioned in my Self Defence 14 post, they are a situational awareness hierarchy that is taught in many self-defence classes.

Here’s the breakdown.

Condition White: You’re completely unaware of your surroundings. Asleep, daydreaming, plugged into social media, or distracted/oblivious in some other way.

Condition Yellow: You’re paying attention to what’s going on in the world.

Condition Orange: You’ve identified something potentially hazardous that requires evaluation.

Condition Red: You have identified an actual threat.

A criticism is that you don’t need to be taught to do it. All animals do it. In fact, it’s impossible NOT to do it.

Some SD instructors have pointed out that the original Cooper Colour Code has no relation to situational awareness. NOTHING. The system was all about mindset and also geared to firearms.

In Condition White, it’s not even, maybe ever, occurred to you that you might have to do something drastic, someday, to survive. You are completely unable to tap into the mental, emotional and physical depths it might take to survive.

In Condition Yellow, you know that on any given day, today, tomorrow, and right now, you might have to do something drastic. To sum up Condition Yellow, you wake up in the morning knowing you might have to kill someone today. And you’re okay with that. Okay, enough, at least.

Condition Orange is when you realise today might be the day. The threat is trying to put you in a position where you have no choice but to kill him. So you make the mental, emotional and physical preparations to do so.

Condition Red is when the threat has left you no choice but to use lethal force.

Here’s a stark example. You can be aware that a threat is pointing a gun at your head and pulling the trigger, and it’s a clear example of Condition Red in the system of situational awareness. But what Cooper was also warning about is that no matter how extreme the threat, you can still be in Condition White. You can be in denial that it’s happening.

You can’t NOT do the awareness: You’re either paying attention, or you’re not. You will focus on things that draw your attention. The thing you focus on may be an imminent threat.

But your level of mental preparedness is something that is under your control.

You can learn the mindset. You can engage in some self-reflection to determine where your mindset stands now. You can mentally rehearse gearing up. You can keep an eye out for your hesitations and blind spots.

This is part of working out your internal rules on violence long before the dark day.