How To Escape From An Automobile Trunk, According To An Ex-Navy SEAL 

Retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson conducted special ops all over the world for 20 years, attached to the NSA and the now-famous SEAL Team Six. He learned some highly specialized skills along the way, and he’s now collected them in a pocket guide entitled 100 Deadly Skills: The SEAL Operative’s Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation. Last week, we excerpted a passage on elbow strikes; this time, the advice is a bit more specialized.

Violent Nomads frequently operate in or near countries that are at war or in political crisis, and thus are vulnerable to being kidnapped for ransom—sometimes as a calculated attempt to thwart a mission, sometimes simply as a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. More and more frequently, travelers to unstable regions face the same risk.

The most predictable points of vulnerability in a traveler’s schedule are his departure from and return to his hotel at the beginning and end of his day—but an abduction may also be the result of a staged automobile accident. Common ruses used by kidnappers to apprehend a target on the road include:

The Bump: The attacker bumps the target’s vehicle from behind. The target gets out to assess the damage and suddenly finds himself in the trunk of a car.

The Good Samaritan: The attackers stage what appears to be an accident or feign a car problem. The target stops to assist and suddenly finds himself in the trunk of a car.

The Trap: Kidnappers use surveillance to follow the target home. When he pulls into his driveway and waits for the gate to open, the attacker pulls up from behind and blocks his car. The target finds himself in the trunk of a car.

In each of these scenarios, the target ends up imprisoned. But he doesn’t have to remain in that state. Take the time to understand how a vehicle’s trunk operates, learning its vulnerabilities and how to defeat them. If locked in a trunk, always try to be positioned in a way that allows access to escape tools.

Excerpted from 100 DEADLY SKILLS: The SEAL Operative’s Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation by Clint Emerson. Copyright © 2015 by Clint Emerson. Used by permission of Touchstone, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.