Ditch the Color Codes: A Simpler, Smarter Model for Situational Awareness

Situational awareness is the foundation of personal safety. It’s your first line of defense, your ability to recognize, assess, and respond to potential threats before they escalate.

For decades Col. Jeff Cooper’s white-yellow-orange-red color codes have been the go-to shorthand for mental readiness in the self-defense world. They gave structure to an abstract idea, be prepared, but they also inserted an extra mental step. When milliseconds matter, pausing to remember “Am I orange or red?” costs time and clarity. Cognitive-science research is blunt about that kind of lag: half the people in the famous gorilla experiment never noticed a full-size gorilla stroll through their field of view because their attention was busy elsewhere (Simons & Chabris, 1999). If we can overlook a gorilla, we can fumble a four-color quiz in a dark parking lot.

I propose a new model: the Three Levels of Awareness, Passive, Active, and Alert. It is not meant to replace Cooper’s work but to simplify and modernize it. It reflects decades of research in perception, threat detection, and attention science, and is shaped by my background as a Marine Corps counterintelligence specialist and professional trainer.

Let me explain.

The Problem with Color

Cooper’s system was revolutionary for its time. Importantly, it wasn’t a threat scale, it was a mental state model.

• White meant unprepared.

• Yellow meant generally aware.

• Orange meant a specific threat had been identified.

• Red meant a decision to act had been made.

But in practice, the message has been muddied. Many students and instructors alike misinterpret the colors as an escalation chart. Instructors pile on nuance. Under stress, people freeze trying to recall what "color" they’re in. And when milliseconds matter, mental bandwidth becomes the limiting factor.

The color metaphor also adds friction. It requires a mental translation layer: first, recognize the situation, then recall the right color, then decide what to do. That extra cognitive hop can delay action or obscure judgment. Behavioral science tells us: the brain performs best when language and action align.

A Better Fit: The Three Levels of Awareness

The Three Levels model uses behavioral descriptors instead of abstract codes. It’s intuitive, rooted in neuroscience, and scalable for everyday use. Most importantly, it reflects how attention operates in real life.

1. Passive

Definition: The attention system is disengaged. You’re physically present, but cognitively absent.

Examples:

• Walking through a parking lot while texting.

• Reading at a stoplight.

• Zoned out on a commute.

This is the default state for most people. Your eyes may be open, but your perceptual filters are down. Psychologists call this inattentional blindness, when you fail to see something right in front of you because your attention is elsewhere. Inattentional-blindness studies show we routinely miss obvious events when distracted, sometimes even when the object walks right through our gaze (Simons & Chabris, 1999). That lapse is where opportunistic crime breeds. 

2. Active

Definition: Your attention is open, curious, and environmentally engaged. You’re not paranoid, just aware.

Examples:

• Noticing who else is in the gas station as you walk in.

• Watching traffic patterns before crossing the street.

• Tracking the rhythm of a crowd at a public event.

Active is the sustainable “eyes up” state. You scan without staring, listen without paranoia, and build a quick mental baseline: What’s normal here? What’s odd? Goal-driven-attention research confirms we notice what’s relevant to our aims and filter out the rest (Most & Scholl, 2005). Because Active feels natural, you can hold it for hours without fatigue.

3. Alert

Definition: A cue breaks your mental model. Something has changed. You stop scanning and begin deciding.

Examples:

• A figure steps out from between parked cars as you approach.

• You hear an argument escalating and turn toward it.

• Someone’s movement or demeanor causes you to slow your pace.

Alert snaps in when something breaks the baseline. Maybe a stranger paces you on the sidewalk or a parked car door swings open as you pass. Your attention narrows to the anomaly, and the decision loop (observe, orient, decide, act) begins. Lab work on threat detection under high load shows that genuinely threatening cues grab attention even when capacity is squeezed Zhao et al., 2016. 

Why Simpler Is Smarter

Cognitive science shows that under pressure, working memory becomes overloaded. If a model requires too much thinking, it breaks when we need it most. That’s why high-performance domains, from aviation to emergency medicine, are moving toward behavior-linked frameworks.

The Three Levels model is:

• Language-accurate: The terms describe what people are doing, not just what they’re feeling.

• Stress-resistant: There are no abstract colors to decode. Just observable states.

• Aligned with neuroscience: Endsley’s foundational work on situational awareness shows that attention operates in layered stages. Our model mirrors that progression.

How It Plays Out Day-to-Day

This framework isn’t a lab experiment, but it is the backbone of our instructor courses. We integrate the three levels with concealed-carry students, first-responder and EMS cohorts, corporate safety teams, and parents who want practical street-smarts for their kids. Because the model is rooted in attention, not tactics, it scales to anyone, anywhere.

Picture a parking-lot walk-through:

• Passive. Earbuds in, eyes glued to your phone as you shuffle toward the car.

• Active. Head comes up, earbuds out, you sweep the lot and register who’s nearby.

• Alert. A stranger leans on a parked car and tracks your movement - you angle away, key fob ready, attention razor-focused until the situation resolves.

No color codes to recall, no mental checklist to juggle, just immediate behavioral cues that keep your mind on what matters.

A Tool for Instructors and Learners Alike

Instructors tell us this model helps students retain information better. It becomes easier to teach, easier to understand, and easier to apply. That’s the holy grail of training: high transfer, low complexity.

In behavioral terms, awareness is a state that can be influenced, not a switch you flip. When students understand that they can shift from passive to active to alert deliberately, and how to practice doing so, we build not just safety, but cognitive agility.

Conclusion: From Colors to Clarity

Col. Cooper’s model did important work by giving language to the idea of mental readiness. It was a step forward in its time. But like all models, it must evolve with what we know.

Today, neuroscience and real-world performance tell us that behavioral clarity beats cognitive abstraction. The Three Levels of Awareness (Passive, Active, and Alert) offer a simpler, smarter way forward. One that reflects how attention actually works and how people actually live.

No color codes. No ambiguity. Just awareness that works.

Further Reading

1. Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). “Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events.” Perception 28(9), 1059-1074. chabris.com

2. Most, S. B., Scholl, B. J., Clifford, E. R., & Simons, D. J. (2005). “What You See Is What You Set: Sustained Inattentional Blindness and the Capture of Awareness.” Psychological Review 112(1), 217-242. perception.yale.edu

3. Endsley, M. R., & Garland, D. J. (Eds.). (2000). Situation Awareness: Analysis and Measurement. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Routledge

4. Gao, H., & Jia, Z. (2016). “Detection of Threats Under Inattentional Blindness and Perceptual Load.” Current Psychology 36(4), 733-739. ResearchGate

Jack Shepard is a Marine Corps veteran, counterintelligence specialist, and founder of Black Watch Training. He designs instructor development and personal defense programs grounded in behavioral science and skill acquisition.