What is your instinct? Fight or flight?

Xavier discusses this topic a bit, with videos to boot.
His post is titled "Three Responses".

Some thoughts of my own...

The time to understand what you will do, how you will react, is before you have to. Yes.... I said it's good to know how you will react before you actually have to react.

And... it's react you will when faced with a situation like that. 'Thinking' would be a luxury and there is rarely time when faced with an emergency or violence directed at you. There is usually time to react, just maybe, and not even that if your opponent is any good at his task. That is the point behind the no-knock midnight police raids in some cases: To deny reaction time to their opponents.

(It's also why the whole idea of 'They should have known we were the police' is bogus, as the raid is designed from the get-go to confuse and deny time to think.
I'm not saying no-knock raids don't have their place, but don't duck the murder charge when you choose the wrong house to raid and kill innocents).

Back on topic... how would you react? Have you ever been tested? Even a little?

Myself, I have learned the hard way that my reaction to attack is to defend, not give in. It's not a cognitive thing, but a visceral reaction. Hit from behind, I have ducked, turned, and struck back, ending up wondering how I got there.
Faced with something coming at me, I knock it away. If I can't knock it away I jump out of the path. It's not a thought.... it's a reaction.

I am aware of how I'm hard wired to react... and have to actively try and tame it.
Not every hit from behind is an attack. Sometimes it's just an accident of the job.

There's good and bad on every path....
Not every flight is good, nor is every fight.
One thing I would argue... almost every surrender is bad.

Thoughts?