The "Kill Zone"

The Importance & Why it is Critical to the Trainee

As the warrior prepares for battle, the individual wears body armor for protection.

The managed & conditioned "Kill Zone" is the "Body Armor" of the Warrior's mental state of mind.

DISCLAIMER - The "Kill Zone" is NOT about killing people. It is about saving lives, especially men and women that serve in the U.S. military, federal government and law enforcement. We lose too many that serve to protect us because the individual does not have a true understanding of what they are being asked to do, or the catastrophic effects and consequences of their actions when they are involved in deadly conflict and must make that difficult decision to engage in the use of deadly force. We have chosen and refer to the term "Kill Zone" as a mental state of mind that an individual enters involuntarily and subconsciously at the onset of deadly conflict. This state of mind is unavoidable and is a human defense mechanism for survival and self-preservation. We encourage anyone to continue to read and learn about it, and to contact us if your interests are with the U.S. military, federal government and law enforcement.

The precursor of deadly engagement is the mental state that an individual enters into as a result of the escalation of an eminent deadly threat condition or situation where the individual becomes actively engaged with one or more individuals is referred to as the "Kill Zone."

The "Kill Zone" sets up the final countdown sequence as the human body completes final preparation to actively and aggressively defend itself from serious bodily harm or death. The "Kill Zone" is the critical transition or bridge between the point where the individual is first aware of self-preservation and the Fight-or-Flight response of survival.

The "Kill Zone" mental state can be deadly for the warrior...

Left un-managed, it can effectively strip away all the warrior's capabilities leaving the warrior helpless against the enemy.

The important significance of the critical "Kill Zone" transitional phase is it offers a huge training opportunity and potential to target specific training methods and applications that helps the trainee actively manage, manipulate and exploit the "Kill Zone" state of mind and become conditioned against the adverse effects of the natural human survival response. The trainee that is able to master his or her own "Kill Zone" state of mind becomes a superior conditioned, fined tune, effective and efficient warrior where the training validates the trainee as truely being Combat Ready.

Troysgate Theater Systems Are...

The "Holy Grail" Component of Deadly Conflict Training

Troysgate designed and developed the Troysgate Theater Systems as a highly specialized, advanced training tool that provides critical training opportunities for the trainee to effectively manage the "Kill Zone" to become a fully conditioned, superior warfighter in combat and deadly conflict situations.

Understanding The "Kill Zone"

An Individual's "CODE RED" Response

We first must establish a common understanding of human behavior and survival, before addressing the "Kill Zone." We will use Wikipedia as a general source for the following information:

• Self-preservation - is a behavior that exists among most living organisms to ensure their survival. Important mechanisms of self-preservation are fear and pain.
• Fight-or-flight response - is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a real, or perceived harmful event, attack, or threat where our life maybe in danger.

A simplistic view and basic understanding of self-preservation and the fight-or-flight response is our natural instinct for survival. By design our survival instinct and fight-or-flight response is a fail safe response that has been "hard-wired" at the onset of the creation of human life. As we experience life, we experience and learn from things that cause, or may cause pain, or that we are fearful and afraid. Through our life experiences we learn to manage fear and avoid things that will cause us pain. When we examine the science of everything that occurs within the human body under the right situation and circumstance, our natural instinct for survival creates an instantaneous response or action that will be automatic, subconcious and involuntary based on an immediate chain reaction and series of complex events occuring simultaneously within the human body. A good example is our normal reaction when we accidently touch something that is very hot - we automatically pull away without conscious thought as a mechanism of self-preservation.

The Warrior Paradigm

The U.S. Military & Law Enforcement

There are several professions where the nature of the job may place the individual in harms way. Two such professions are serving in the U.S. military and law enforcement - their missions are to protect us from foreign and domestic threats. These men and women face the real dangers of their profession in the performance of their duty. Where it is human nature to move away from danger and dangerous situations, they are trained to confront the dangerous unknown. The stakes are always high, especially when it is certain they will be required to enter directly into situations involving the enemy, or criminal element. As the soldier's or law enforcement officer's proximity to danger or a dangerous situation draws the individual closer, his or her ability to manage increasing stress levels and their effects are tested. When the right situation and circumstance escalates to a certain "flash-point" resulting in deadly engagement, the individual may be unavoidably drawn into what we refer to as the "Kill Zone."

"Into the Kill Zone"

The Truth & Reality of Deadly Engagement

To be absolutely clear, the "Kill Zone," is not the situation nor the actions taken by an individual. The "Kill Zone" is the immediate state of mind of the individual that has been drawn into a deadly encounter situation. The soldier and law enforcement officer is taught to understand what is involved and what he or she would expect to feel and experience, and how to train and prepare for combat and deadly conflict. However, the very best that any existing training can ultimately provide and accomplish is only the preparation for an event. What is missing is the capability to replicate and expose an individual to a realistic simulated deadly encounter where he or she is able to feel and experience it as if it were actually real. The feeling and experience has only been possible in actual combat and out in the field where everything is real and the consequences are real. Troysgate has developed and is actively marketing and selling Troysgate Theater Systems specifically designed to place the trainee in safe and controlled, live-fire training environment where the training exercises and scenarios replicate realistic combat and deadly conflict situations that are so real and convincing to the trainee that we can easily take the trainee into the "Kill Zone." It is through the Troysgate patented system and training methodology that we are successful in placing the trainee in a simulated training situation where he or she enters into the "Kill Zone" and is able to feel and experience what a deadly encounter really is like. The validation of our training method is the ability to replicate the same emotional, pyschological and physiological effects the trainee would exhibit in actual deadly conflict. We have the only training solution that replicates deadly conflict, so that the trainee can be exposed to it, gain the experiences and train within the "Kill Zone" to become better at handling and responding to combat and deadly encounter situations. There are no other training systems in existence and available today that can accomplish what our training methodology and Troysgate Theater Systems are able to accomplish.

The Activated "Kill Switch"

Locked in Deadly Engagement - Helpless to Survival

In combat and deadly encounter situations that quickly escalate into deadly engagement, the individual may become quickly overwhelmed by the situation and can quickly fall into survival mode. When an individual begins to fear for his or her life, the natural human instinct will focus entirely on self-preservation. As this begins to occur, the already overwhelmed individual is drawn too deep into deadly engagement and is completely "lost" in his or her survival and unable to manage the "fear" mechanism of self-preservation. When built in survival defense mechanisms reach a certain threshold, a critical and powerful second survival component is activated and unleashed deep within the recesses and isolation of the inner brain region in what we refer to as the "Kill Switch." This part of the brain receives no information other than to activate the "Kill Switch" and take full control of the entire body and commands the actions responsible for self-preservation and survival. The activation of the "Kill Switch" marks at critical milestone in deadly engagement; it is the Point of No Return where the individual will fight to his or her death, unless something else happens to change the course of the deadly event.

The "Kill Switch" is responsible for the ultimate fight response; it is the last survival effort that if unsuccessful means eminent death for the individual. The ultimate fight response will be extremely violent and can continue indefinitely. Whatever is considered non-essential to the survival effort is shutdown - the body (not the "human" individual) becomes a supercharged killing machine. Unless there is sufficient external interferrence that can effectively change the course of the outcome, it will come to an end when the threat has been stopped, or the individual has become incapacitated. In this hightened survival state the human body will do anything, even things that would seem unthinkable, unreasonable or impossible in a conscious state of mind. Since these actions are not controlled by the individual nor the conscious part of the brain where rational thinking occurs, the threat and fight for survival may continue even when the initial threat condition becomes diminished or ceases to exist. This is why during deadly engagement with a suspect where the law enforcement officer is actively fighting for survival that the suspect can be shot in the back while attempting to disengage from the deadly engagement. Unfortunately, the officer is dead locked within the "Kill Zone" state of mind where the "Kill Switch" has been turned on and cannot be turned off making it virtually impossible to consciously disengage. In most instances, this is why an individual will have no memory of the specific details of the engagement. A good analogy is looking at the combined distance/time relationships when stopping a car travelling at 200 mph. The vehicle cannot be brought to a complete stop instantaneously; it will continue to travel about 2300 feet in 12.5 before it finally comes to a complete stop. Just as any individual that is dead locked within the "Kill Zone" and the "Kill Switch" activated will require a significant period of time under the best possible conditions before the body can shutdown the violent actions of survival and return to a conscious, normal state where the "human" individual can resume full control.

Managing the "Kill Zone - Kill Switch"

Replicating Realistic Deadly Conflict Situations in Training

Until the development of the Troysgate Theater Systems, there has been no type of training in existence capable of:

1. Replicating realistic deadly conflict situations that are perceived as real, believable and convincing to an individual,
2. Drawing an individual into the "Kill Zone" mental state,
3. Reproducing the same emotional, pyschological and physiological effects that an individual would experience in actual combat or deadly conflict, and
4. Triggering survival defense mechanisms that are sufficient to reach within the deep recesses of the inner brain region and activate the "Kill Switch."

A viable training solution must have the capability to accomplish at least the first three (3) of these conditions simultaneously. Troysgate is able to acheive all four (4) conditions which would seem impossible and unheard of in simulated training. Only when these conditions can be acheived in training are the hidden secrets to deadly engagement revealed and realized. Through the understanding of the importance and the relationships regarding these conditions can effective training solutions and training programs be developed and implemented for deadly conflict training. Without the capability to take an individual into the "Kill Zone," the individual would never have the opportunity to really understand what a deadly encounter really is or know how he or she would react. With Troysgate Theater Systems, the ability to enter into the "Kill Zone" provides valuable training challenges where the individual is able to test his or her limits and capabilities, and learn to manage the effects of deadly engagement and to push their limits to the threshold point to prevent turning on the "Kill Switch." The level of training that can be accomplished with Troysgate Theater Systems is endless with unlimited training applications and solutions that will continue to provide the individual with valuable deadly conflict exposures and experiences, so that the "warrior within" can advance and sustain superior mental and response conditioning that will serve the individual out in the field under the most challenging situations.