ALIVE Training, and Staying That Way Before the Threat

By Chris Grollnek, Active Shooter Expert · Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC (ASPP™) · The Other Side of Public Safety

This is the sixth and last post in a series that takes the response curricula one at a time and asks each the same question: what happens in the window before the curriculum activates? We have walked Run, Hide, Fight, Avoid, Deny, Defend, ALICE training and CRASE training. A.L.I.V.E. closes it out.

What does ALIVE training actually teach?

A.L.I.V.E. was created in 2014 by Michael Julian and built out from after action reports rather than from theory. The five steps are Assess the situation quickly, Leave the area if you can, Impede the shooter, use Violence when it is necessary, and Expose your position carefully. His book on the method, 10 Minutes to Live, followed in 2017, and the program now reports more than 500,000 civilians trained by more than 400 certified instructors across eight countries.

That reach is not an accident. The sequence is short enough to remember under stress, it gives a person permission to act rather than freeze, and it does not pretend that every room has an exit. Those are real virtues and we will not pretend otherwise.

What window does ALIVE training miss?

The first letter is the tell. Assess begins when there is something to assess, which means a threat is already present and a person is already deciding whether to run. Everything after that letter is correct. The difficulty is that the moment is the end of a long process, not the start of one.

The FBI studied the pre-attack behaviors of active shooters and found that each one displayed roughly four to five observable concerning behaviors over a span of weeks and months before the attack, and those behaviors were seen by classmates, coworkers, teachers and family, which is to say they were seen by the same people an ALIVE class is teaching what to do afterward, at a point when something else could still have been done instead.

Across the 528 active shooter incidents recorded between 2000 and 2024, the pattern holds. Somebody knew something. The question worth asking is not whether your people could assess, leave and impede correctly on the day; it is whether the person who was uneasy in March had a named place to take it.

What does that window look like from the scene?

Our founder, Chris Grollnek, Chairman of the Board & Founding Principal, is a Former U.S. Marine and retired police detective corporal who was on scene at one of these events, where the attacker fired 168 rounds at responders and left a vehicle borne explosive device behind. He has said since that no survival course, taught by anyone, would have changed the weeks that led up to that afternoon. The work of an active shooter expert lives in that earlier stretch, and something there had to happen instead.

Where does ALIVE fit in the P.R.O. Model™?

An organization that has trained its people in A.L.I.V.E. has bought the R, and the R saves lives once the worst has already started. The P.R.O. Model™ is Prevention, Response, Options, in that order, selected by the U.S. Department of Justice as “A” national standard for 2022–2025 and again for 2026–2030, then in use at some installations and commands across the Department of Defense.

The order is the argument. Five survival steps delivered into an organization that already has a written reporting route, a named owner for concerns and a documented vulnerability assessment are worth more than the same five steps delivered into a building where nobody knows who a worry goes to. Run them together. Teach A.L.I.V.E. in the fall, keep the threat assessment team meeting in September, and train the leader who has to make the call in an active shooter tabletop simulation before the call ever comes.

If you are weighing one purchase against the other, the buyer’s version of this argument, with the seven questions to put to any provider, is at prevention vs response.

Frequently asked questions

Is ALIVE training worth it?

Yes. It is well constructed, it is taught in eight countries, and it was drawn from real incidents rather than invented at a desk. The caution is what the organization records afterward. An ALIVE training roster proves attendance. It does not prove that the exposures in your building were found and closed.

What is the difference between A.L.I.V.E. and the P.R.O. Model™?

A.L.I.V.E. trains individual survival decisions during an event. The P.R.O. Model™ maps the whole timeline, with prevention ahead of response and options behind it. They cover different parts of the same problem.

Can ALIVE training and prevention training run together?

They should. Keep A.L.I.V.E. for the response layer, and put an assessment, a reporting route and a named owner in front of it. Neither one has to be removed for the other to work.

Sources

Federal Bureau of Investigation. A Study of the Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters in the United States Between 2000 and 2013. 2018.
A.L.I.V.E. Active Shooter Survival Training. Program description and step definitions, publisher’s own site, retrieved 22 August 2026.
Julian, Michael. 10 Minutes to Live: Surviving an Active Shooter Using A.L.I.V.E. 2017.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Active shooter incident reports, 2000 through 2024.
U.S. Department of Justice, P.R.O. Model™ selection, 2022–2025 and 2026–2030.