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Escape from L.A.: Urban escape and evasion class preps reader-hipsters

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Call it the Neil Strauss effect. Weeks before the bestselling author’s new book hit the streets, one of the preparedness classes he wrote about started seeing an uptick in registration. ‘Emergency,’ in stores today, is the name of the book. In it, Strauss channels his inner survivalist, taking dozens of emergency preparedness classes, including gun training, flight lessons, CPR and — the course that’s seeing the boost — Urban Escape and Evasion.

Run by Kevin Reeve, who got a lot of ink in ‘Emergency’ as the survivalist-owner of the New Jersey business onPoint Tactical, Urban Escape and Evasion is a three-day class that, among other things, teaches participants how to pick locks, hijack cars and, generally speaking, get out of Dodge if the social order breaks down and city living hits the skids. Ordinarily, the class attracts a combat-ready mix of Navy SEALs, martial-arts instructors, Blackwater employees and police officers, Reeve said. But registrants for the class that’s coming to L.A. for two weekends in late March is ‘more civilian,’ he said.

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‘The urban survival course is awesome,’ said Strauss, who took the class in Oklahoma City last summer. ‘It definitely was, like, this should not even be legal to be taught.’ Strauss ranks the course among his top three most valuable trainings, along with emergency medical technician certification and a wilderness survival program called Tracker School.

The first of the three days goes something like this: After taking students through the ‘emotional, mental stuff to prepare them for dangerous living,’ Reeve said, he then teaches them how to pick a padlock, get out of a padlock, get out of a flexicuff or rope and escape from the trunk of a car. The following day is a more intense primer on lock picking, followed by preparations for the class finale — a day when students are handcuffed and dumped on the west side of town, where they need to make their way from Venice to Santa Monica on foot, find a source of water and convince strangers to let them use their cellphones.

‘Your objective is to survive the day without being captured,’ said Reeve, who developed the course and has been teaching it for five years. ‘You have to escape and evade a team of guys with your mug shot who are trying to track you down and watch you. If they catch you, they’ll handcuff you again and you have to start over.’

Good times.

— Susan Carpenter

Photo credits: Neil Strauss with his goats Thumper (left) and Lady by Al Seib / Los Angeles Times. At right, an onPoint tactical class by Kevin Reeve, onPoint Tactical

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