This wasn’t what I expected. In a way it left me feeling more anxious as it had so many stories of scary things happening to people. I am not sure who the right audience is for this book but I don’t think it’s a good fit for my readers. Im sure others will find it interesting and informative.

This was an eye-opening and informative read. Coursen tackles many wide ranging topics that help readers understand their own personal safety in new ways.

This book is about being more prepared to deal with any safety crisis that you might face in your life. The book is written by Spencer Coursen, a security expert that has military training, and worked as a security agent for celebrities and athletes before forming his own security company. He strongly suggests that people should attempt to be more prepared and vigilant, because in his words “you are in the most in danger when you feel the most safe.”

This book contains a few counter-intuitive ideas, and some concepts that on the surface seem to contradict each other. For example, the author points out all the ways that humans are safer now than we ever have been before; yet anxiety levels keep rising every year. Coursen cites surveys that showed drastically increasing anxiety levels annually, and this part of the book was written in 2019 before the pandemic. He contends that this increasing anxiety level is at least somewhat related to safety fears; but this is hard to reconcile with his other point that people are most vulnerable when they feel the most safe. The most difficult thing about reading the first part of this book was trying to decide exactly how concerned and preoccupied with safety I should actually be. It seemed like there was a delicate balance between raising my daily stress levels but being more prepared, or being less anxious every day but more susceptible to a safety crisis.

As the book goes on, Coursen attempts to partially resolve this dilemma by providing a few strategies and tips to make it easier to identify common safety mistakes that people tend to make. He has chapters devoted to Avoidance, False Authority, Fitness, and False Expectations, that all have useful tips to consider; as Coursen points out real life situations that demonstrate the errors in judgment that real people showed in moments of crisis. He continues to use real world examples as he identifies other common mistakes, in chapters about Oversharing, Inside Threats, Overprotecting Children, Alarm Fatigue, False Equivalence, Complacency and more. Each chapter summarizes the concept, gives examples of what not to do, and then ends the chapter with a few key actionable points to try to implement yourself.

At first, after reading the Introduction, I was worried that I would have to increase my anxiety levels in order to increase my safety. After reading the entire book though, I see that this is really more of a collection of examples of what NOT to do, and a few tips to try and practice yourself, so that you are more prepared when a crisis DOES actually happen. The key is not being overly anxious, but knowing what mistakes you can avoid, so that you are more vigilant and ready to make better decisions. Overall I appreciate the information in this book, and I think I will refer back to it in the future.

I really enjoyed The Safety Trap - a well written book that is surprisingly relevant to our current time and the events that are currently happening around us.

I got the opportunity to interview Spencer Coursen, the author, on my youtube channel. You can see the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyJyLvkoGRs

The truth is that when we feel safest is actually when we are in the most danger.

This was a quick suspense read! I felt this to be more of a slow burn! But quickly picked up! This was a fun book!