Complete control is an illusion. You can take steps to insulate yourself. Layered steps are better. You cannot fully control the actions of an independent actor. Some Hollywood actor was beaten in a home invasion when the criminals decided to go to a place where people had nice stuff they could steal. Jack Ma was put into a Chinese gulag and had his teeth ripped out despite his wealth. Some digital nomads had their cars burned by a mob in Mexico that was angry over rising rents.
For crime, you can reduce the risk. Stick-fighting is actually the last line of defense. If you are there, then your other layers have failed. Don’t go where criminals congregate. Be aware and cross the street to avoid a group of thugs. Lock the door of your house. When in the US I carry a H&K pistol. Sometimes the criminals come anyway. Sometimes they do their own risk assessment and select easier targets. Sometimes they don’t even realize you exist. They all have different levels of skill and mindset, from the bumbling and tentative to the ruthless and efficient.
The person here who looked at a map and noted the proximity to an unstable Iran and that there were few escape routes from the UAE if the region erupted was proven completely correct. That was smart risk assessment. You can greatly reduce your personal risk by not living there, which everyone here did. It was also fairly easy to see this building up over the past few weeks. However, all of that means little if you were near the US embassy in Oslo the other day. If you are in the UAE, stay away from military targets or areas underneath interception zones. Stay on lower floors of hotels or in one or two floor residential rentals so you can exit easier. Have multiple egress plans from the region. Assess the situation and Iran’s capability to escalate or change the situation. State actors have different abilities and means of power projection, so understand those and the attack surfaces. You’ve just reduced your (current) risk to random bad luck by just that.
Have different residencies, bank accounts, and stores of wealth. Watch global and local events and geopolitics and be aware. Transfer yourself and exposed assets quickly before the problem develops. You’ll still get surprised sometimes as no one is omniscient. If you get put on a list as a sanctioned PEP by the US then you’ll lose most of it (or have little effective ability to use it) anyway.
No one here is living in fortified compounds in fear (maybe?). All here built functional systems, are doing cost versus benefit analysis, and are living their lives. Someone may not see any benefit worth the risk of going into a combat zone. Others may benefit by going there and assess the magnitude of risk as minimal.
Causes and consequences of risk are different. Different causes may have the same effective likelihood and outcome. All the causes in this thread share the commonality that they are generated by independent outside actors and are not fully controllable.
For crime, you can reduce the risk. Stick-fighting is actually the last line of defense. If you are there, then your other layers have failed. Don’t go where criminals congregate. Be aware and cross the street to avoid a group of thugs. Lock the door of your house. When in the US I carry a H&K pistol. Sometimes the criminals come anyway. Sometimes they do their own risk assessment and select easier targets. Sometimes they don’t even realize you exist. They all have different levels of skill and mindset, from the bumbling and tentative to the ruthless and efficient.
The person here who looked at a map and noted the proximity to an unstable Iran and that there were few escape routes from the UAE if the region erupted was proven completely correct. That was smart risk assessment. You can greatly reduce your personal risk by not living there, which everyone here did. It was also fairly easy to see this building up over the past few weeks. However, all of that means little if you were near the US embassy in Oslo the other day. If you are in the UAE, stay away from military targets or areas underneath interception zones. Stay on lower floors of hotels or in one or two floor residential rentals so you can exit easier. Have multiple egress plans from the region. Assess the situation and Iran’s capability to escalate or change the situation. State actors have different abilities and means of power projection, so understand those and the attack surfaces. You’ve just reduced your (current) risk to random bad luck by just that.
Have different residencies, bank accounts, and stores of wealth. Watch global and local events and geopolitics and be aware. Transfer yourself and exposed assets quickly before the problem develops. You’ll still get surprised sometimes as no one is omniscient. If you get put on a list as a sanctioned PEP by the US then you’ll lose most of it (or have little effective ability to use it) anyway.
No one here is living in fortified compounds in fear (maybe?). All here built functional systems, are doing cost versus benefit analysis, and are living their lives. Someone may not see any benefit worth the risk of going into a combat zone. Others may benefit by going there and assess the magnitude of risk as minimal.
Causes and consequences of risk are different. Different causes may have the same effective likelihood and outcome. All the causes in this thread share the commonality that they are generated by independent outside actors and are not fully controllable.
This is NOT true! I live in China now and I've been coming to China for decades. Jack Ma was caught trying to bring "Western financial democracy and rent-seeking feudalism" to China. A special unit did a sneak & peek on him and then seized all of his things and confronted him. Jack Ma is just the Chinese version of Benedict Arnold. 
