It might be one of the scarier scenarios you can think of: You wake up late at night, or are watching TV quietly in your home, and you just don’t hear a disturbance, you see one.

As your eyes pry open from deep sleep you see an intruder in your bedroom, or you’re sitting on your family room couch, and someone immediately busts down your door. There you are. There they are.

Sure, you have your gun in a quick release safe, but there is no time even for that. You have an array of hunting knives and combat blades in your office, but it’s too far away for that. It is go time, and you are unarmed.

There are three rules which you need to act on immediately, or before you know it you or your loved ones could be harmed, or worse, taken captive and then physically or sexually assaulted and then killed.

1. Go! Take control by attempting to chase them out verbally by approaching them directly and aggressively. The focus is to act! Go-Go-Go! Once you start to barter or negotiate you put them in control. The only exception here is if they have a firearm pointed at you. In that case, close the gap submissively (Go!… slowly), and perform a gun disarm.

The point is, that you’ve been surprised, and need to gain control back as quickly as possible with aggression. The faster you put your “Alpha” hat on, with a deep aggressive voice, you’re giving them the couple seconds it takes for you to reach them and turn around to leave your house. If they don’t, it’s time to put some bite behind your bark.

2. Hard! If they are not fleeing, then you’ll need to engage in close quarters combat. Hard. Enter on in

with a longer range groin kick, as people rarely defend their low line. Whether you make contact or not, you’ll get a flinch reflex, drawing their attention down.

After that, use the three most ballistic self-defense moves: elbow strikes, knees and head butts. As I stated before, outside of a gun disarm, this is the same strategy you want to use if someone is wielding a weapon. Hit them hard in the low line, and then close the gap to unleash your hard hitting tools.

3. Fast! Even though you are first engaging, your last step is to escape. Hit and run. Fast. If you need to get and escort family members out, do it quickly. Pick up little ones, drag out older ones, but get out of the house.

It should be noted in these last two steps that you never stop until you reach your objective. In the second step, your objective is to use a bara of strikes until you incapacitate your intruder. Same with the final step, keep running fast until your reach your objective of a safe place whether that is outside or a neighbor’s house.

In this Go-Hard-Fast tactic, intensity is the key. Do everything as if your life depends on it, because it does.