Brad Rhame

The levels of awareness are highly important in deterring an attack and if an attack happens, surviving it. The awareness levels were pioneered by Marine Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Cooper and are commonly referred to as Cooper’s color code. In self-defense, utilizing the different levels of Cooper’s color code ensures you are aware of what is going on around you and allows you to respond faster if attacked.

Cooper describes four levels of awareness: white, yellow, orange and red. [1] The Marine Corps uses Cooper’s four and added condition black. Furthermore, Army Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman describes another condition level, gray, between red and black. [2] There will be a whole post dedicated to condition gray in the future. For this post we will be discussing levels white, yellow, orange, red and black. The website Stratfor, does a really good job of translating the color codes as: white = tuned out…