Scenario: It’s late at night . You are accosted by a random thug that kidnaps you and takes you to his basement/dungeon/whatever . There he holds a gun/knife to your head/throat.
Would you beg for him to spare your life or would you fight back at all costs?
0 voters
I have, and I would.
I don’t normally like to reject the premise of a hypothetical, but I would not beg because I would not be in that scenario. If someone pulled a gun on me and sought to have me get in a trunk for transport elsewhere, I would resist–likely at the cost of my life. My logic being that the likelihood of me surviving the encounter with a gun wielding person who has made the decision to also kidnap me and move me elsewhere…is not good. I would also suspect I’m not demographically a likely candidate for such a crime (older male, large, not wealthy enough to be kidnapped, unlikely to be the target of sexual assault etc.)
I don’t have anything close to Rambo illusions, if someone has the drop on you and has you at gunpoint, you are 99% going to lose this encounter. But I’m not going to lay down and let them take me somewhere else for torture or what else, if I’m going to die I’m going to die resisting. Now if someone pulled a gun on me and asked for my wallet, the keys to my car, etc, I’d hand them over, avoid staring at them, and do the best I could to deescalate. No piece of property is worth my life. But submitting for transport elsewhere is a very different thing.
I’d fight first, and after losing the fight, beg.
If your main question is whether “pride” is an issue - absolutely not. I’d saying or do whatever the hell I thought pragmatically gave me the best chance of survival. Who cares about words? If begging bought me a few minutes because I knew a cop was likely to come by shortly, I’d beg. If kicking in the balls and running like hell was the best option, I’d do that.
I’ve read that such begging is actually likelier to annoy the perp and lead to one being killed.
I mean… How would they know? Dead men tell no tales.
I guess the follow-up question is: if the perp was a woman, would you explain to her that she was actually holding the gun wrong?
If you go to a secondary crime scene there’s a good chance you won’t make it out. In light of that, I think I’d fight tooth and nail to avoid being kidnapped knowing that my odds of survival/avoiding harm will plummet if I go along with my attacker. Ultimately I can’t be sure what I’d do until placed in such a situation and I don’t really want to put myself through that particular test.
I wish I could find the source again (it’s been a few years.) But it said that hostage-captors don’t usually execute hostages randomly, but rather, tend to kill them in a sequence/order based off of whom they find the most dislikable or high-maintenance - and that in a scenario where you are one of multiple hostages, assuming that immediate escape is not possible, your utmost priority is to make yourself as un-annoying to your captors as possible, which entails being as discreet, quiet, and un-noticeable or un-conspicuous among the hostages as you can. Being a loud, blubbering, bawling, wailing wreck who is begging for his or her life is not only not likely to lead to release of any sort, but in fact is highly likely to irritate the captors and make that hostage much likelier to get killed first.
On the other hand, if you can survive long enough, you eventually can build rapport with your captors as time goes on (a sort of reverse Stockholm Syndrome) and they will eventually be more reluctant to kill you.
That advice was only written for an extremely specific and narrow scenario, though. If you are a woman who is being kidnapped by a serial rapist/killer, that would be far different, and your only option is to immediately fight back with everything you’ve got because it only gets worse for you from that point (the very beginning) on, and if you get taken to some faraway secluded location it’ll most likely be your eventual grave.
I’d rub the lotion on my skin.
I think I’d just look confused, and mostly keep silent, acquiesce to their demands, and then just hope things work out without any death. I’m not going to resist, but I don’t think I’d beg either.
I’d like to think I wouldn’t beg, but I probably would.
I’ve had a gun pointed at me at close range and with evil intent. I froze.
Look, I can’t say what the future will bring or know for a fact what I’d do someday… but on that day I just froze.
Many years ago, my uncle was a witness to a stabbing that happened in full view of all the students in a room (himself included). He froze in sheer shock, as did everyone else. It’s probably the most natural reaction.
I try to adjust my language to suit the situation.
If I’m threatened with death, I would (hopefully) think of something useful to say.
If the thug wants me to beg, I’ll go along with it.
If a police officer wants to talk to me, I will be polite and ask “How can I help?”
When I worked as a teacher, the Headmaster asked us to call him ‘Sir’ in front of parents. I had no problem with that (I knew he wanted to set a suitable tone.)
If I’m with a happy, slightly intoxicated group of blokes, then I might swear (if that’s the current ‘norm’.)
That’s what the vast majority of people do in threatening situations. The body has systems in place to shut it down when threatened - this is called tonic immobility. It’s especially common in sexual assault. The person being assaulted is physically unable to move.
So yeah, hypotheticals are fun and all, but people’s imaginations rarely reflect reality.
This article focuses on sexual assault but talks about the cascade of defense mechanisms which generalizes to other threats.
I’ve been shot at. Luckily, it wasn’t at close range. We were called to the scene of a hostage situation (guy barricaded himself and his family inside his house), and two police officers had been shot. My partner and I had to run into the open to get one of the officers before he was shot again. I’m not going to say that any of the bullets came near me, but it sure seemed like it. We were able to get the officer into the ambulance with no further incident.
I’ve also been mugged at knifepoint while in Miami. Thrown up against the wall and had a knife stuck in my ear.
I didn’t beg, but I also didn’t resist at all.
When I’ve had a knife pulled on me I talked shit about what a pussy they were for using a knife. I doubt I’d have a different reaction to a gun. I also got knocked out the last time a guy pulled a knife so it isn’t like I’m a super hero.
You know, I’ve talked that ‘10 minutes of time’ out 100 times; I was really emotional about it at the time ( and I didn’t want to forgive myself for freezing up). I now understand that it was the best case scenario and that the person with the gun pointed center mass would probably have ‘acted badly’ had I taken any other course of action.
I “forgive” myself now of course. The real underlying emotions were how deeply humiliating it was that some low-class drunk < can’t say wrong forum> could hold my life in the balance with a little two pound gun.