Why did the production company choose the Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection system out of the hundreds of martial arts systems in the United States? According to Jamin Mendlesohn, "Jim Wagner is the only one really training civilians how to survive terrorist attacks. We looked at all the other systems."
When Mendlesohn first contacted Wagner she told him, "Mr. Spurlock will be filming a movie about the War on Terrorism. He will be going to some very dangerous countries and into a lot of potentially dangerous situations. We would like for you to teach him how to survive over there. We want you to prepare him for his mission." Then she added, "And, oh by the way, we want to include some of this training in the film. We also want you in the movie."
For eight hours Jim Wagner taught Spurlock Terrorism Survival, which is one course out of five from the Level 1 Reality-Based Personal Protection system. Spurlock was taught, by actually doing, how to a hand grenade or an Improvised Explosive Device attack, a common occurrence in the part of the world where the filming took place. He was then taught how to survive a small arms attack using air guns that fire a 6mm plastic projectile.
Americans are often not appreciated in some hot spots of the world, especially in the Middle East, and they often express it by placing a bomb on the person's car or in their hotel room. Jim Wagner, having been trained by the United States government, as well as by the Israelis, British, and Spanish, passed on this life-saving knowledge to Spurlock. During the training he was required to do both building bomb searches and car bomb searches.
The hands-on training also included how to survive a sniper attack in pinned down situations. Part of this very training appeared on a CNN interview in January 2008. Just before the release of the film Morgan Spurlock appeard on ABC's Good Morning America in which the clip they used was Jim Wagner teaching the star some personal protection along with sniper survival skills from his popular civilian course Terrorism Survival.
With the help of several of Jim Wagner’s assistants he had Spurlock go through anti-kidnapping techniques; all about the pre-conflict stage, and how to avoid this dangerous crime all together. If he were to have fallen into the hands of Al Qaeda or some other group while traveling around the hostile countryside getting interviews Spurlock taught him how to survive as a hostage? Fortunately, he never had to use this portion of his training.
The final phase of Spurlock's training was in CBRN (Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear) training. Not that he was going to be hit by a nuclear bomb over there, but a chemical attack was a real possibility, especially after many attacks in Baghdad where Al Qaeda was crashing chlorine tanker trucks into soft targets and rigged them to explode and dump their toxic load. Spurlock was willing to get first-hand experience of a chemical attack. Wagner exposed him to Oleoresin Capsicum (pepper spray). Spurlock stood in the middle of the room and shot a good steady stream of fluid right into the eyeballs and bridge of the nose. Spurlock instantly dropped to his knees and yelled out. He thought he was going to die, even though he was assured before hand that he wouldn’t.
After twenty five minutes in the bathroom flushing his face continually with water, and being checked on every five minutes, he finally emerged red eyed and puffy faced. He then expressed recounted the horrible feeling that was, and fully understood the evil of a terrorist chemical attack. He knew that one would not recover from a real attack like he did from pepper spray. Yet, despite his appearance and still burning face he proudly accepted his Terrorism Survival training certificate from Jim Wagner.
Click here for Sundance video clip
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