Avoiding Factual Muggings

First, look up the actual crime rate in your area. In the likely event that it is low enough to not worry about it, you can go back to listening to music, staring at your phone and taking shortcuts through dark alleys, with positive expected value.

This doesn't seem like a relevant topic for this board, or at least belongs as a subthread under a Procedural Knowledge post like the linked one.

Users need to be careful to stay on topic and not divert this successful board into tangential issues like, "What's the best kind of staple" and such.

My Taekwondo teacher would ask the class:

Suppose I try to punch you. What do you do? ... Run away!

He would also say:

Suppose I break your nose. What do you do? ... Call your lawyer!

I don't mean to be rude, but have you or anyone else commenting gotten mugged? I've walked around college campuses and some (fairly) large cities late at night because I'm an insomniac at times, and I haven't been mugged yet.

I try to look alert and walk with a bit of a swagger if I think that it will make me look like less of an easy target, but I don't know if these are working because I haven't been mugged when not actively doing these things.

Basically, I'm asking if all of these amount to tiger-repellent rocks, or whether they are developed heuristics.

On clothing and caution in environment selection. (And on being generally awesome.)

Woman: Thank you! Thank you! That thing was gonna kill me!
Spike: Well, what do you expect? Out alone in this neighborhood: I got half a mind to kill you myself, you half wit.
Woman: What?
Spike: I mean, honestly, what kind of retard wears heels like that in a dark alley? Take two steps, break your bloody ankle.

Woman: I was just trying to get home!
Spike: Well, get a cab, you moron! And on the way, if a stranger offers you candy, don't get in the van!

Spike (from Angel).

There's the strategy of "avoid high-crime areas", perhaps too obvious to even mention, this is what most of the people i know do.

In addition to "appear to be alert", we could add "actually be alert". Although, i'm not particularly worldly and probably someone would need to elaborate on the tactical issue of what exactly one should do if one is aware of a potential threat.

Agree with Clippy, but as an exercise, my answers would be:

1) Stay in public. I repeat this, from personal experience in rough neighborhoods as a kid in Ukraine.

2) Looking like a badass may or may not help, depending on whether the potential perpetrator is after your money or your status.

3) Looking like a total nobody (or even like a bum) may not help, depending on the same thing.

4) Element of surprise helps, potential perpetrators are unlikely to think more than one step ahead. Run, scream, pretend to know the local mafia lord.

Appear to be alert -- don't listen to music, use your phone, and keep moving. If you go so far as to run or jog to your destination, you will be a very unappealing target.

Sorry, the meaning here is a bit ambiguous, are you saying I should use my phone or that I shouldn't?

Appear to be armed. Concealed weapons don't help -- they are only useful once you have already been selected as a target. Visible and obvious weapons such as guns and knives are usually too much trouble to be worth it. Ordinary objects that can be used as weapons, such as baseball bats and hammers may be best, as they act a deterrent without the hassle that traditional weapons bring.

I'm also worried about this, do you have a good reason to believe this will help, my intuition tells me you may attract more unwanted attention than you deter by carrying a baseball bat through a high-crime area.

Disclaimer: I've never been mugged, and only noticed a few possible attempted muggings. All this comes from a few years of martial arts training roughly halfway between RBSD and TMA.

If you can't avoid walking past someone who makes you feel uncomfortable, walk quickly and over-emphasize the motion of walking: Swinging your arms shoulder-high automatically defends against many attacks.

The "interview" phase of an attack takes different forms. Between young males in a bar, it'll be an escalation through verbal, postural, and physical aggression. In a profit-driven crime, it will be subtler:

If someone's on an intercept course for you, move perpendicular to their path and see if they track you. If they're getting within 20 feet, direct them to one side or the other by pointing, or put up a hand in the "stop" gesture. Depending on the circumstances, either tracking or ignoring your "stay away" gesture, alone, provides a strong enough likelihood ratio to justify fighting or fleeing. Don't turn your body away or close your eyes; that may turn away the wrath of an alpha, but it'll get you eaten by a predator.

another edit:

Anytime anybody has a Monday or Wednesday evening free in Tampa Bay, get in touch. My instructor's a kinesthetic genius and loves working defense in the liminal space between the intention to attack and the first punch.

What are some other easy measures that people can take to make themselves less of a likely target?

Posture. Somewhat overlaps with 'alertness'. Roughly speaking appearing to be high status within the subculture makes all the difference. (Where the subculture on the street does not mean looking like an upperclass rich person. Appearing like a high status uperclass rich folk is what you need to deter high status equivalents of muggings. Social games, backstabbing and aggressive business moves.)

I feel like I should have more advice on this, since I worked for four years in a rather bad neighborhood and often found myself waiting at dark bus stops for significant amounts of time. The only thing I can really suggest is that you make a point of looking like you're not worth bothering with, though - by which I mean mostly clothes-based and body-language-based signaling that you aren't wealthy and aren't trying to hide anything (e.g. cash). (Note that I'm not saying not to carry cash - that kind of advice never made much sense to me - just don't let your body language change when you do.)

The frequency of instances where one is approached by panhandlers requesting money may be a useful measure of how much one is attracting the kind of attention that would lead one to be mugged.

In re appearing to be armed: A cane seems like the most reasonable choice, and even that has some social costs.

I know someone who has intermittent hip problems, and is intermittently hassled by random strangers because she doesn't always look as though she needs it.

Sigh, I got sort of mugged yesterday (only one thing got taken, got to keep my phone/wallet). I guess another thing is don't be a skinny young man ;)

While I'm not sure this is really the sort of post we want on LW, one thing I suggest (that worked for me):

• When asked by a suspicious young man for 17 cents, he plans to grab it and run. I would suggest carrying on walking quickly and confidently, but YMMV; I felt fairly confident that I could have fought the guy off had he decided on a more high-risk approach.