One Geek

As part of the course yesterday we did a hostage simulation.

At the start there was a very dodgy 80’s Christian video about a hostage situation in the past filled with melodramatic music. It was really quite funny.

After that we broke up into our groups of 10, had to give up our mobiles and watches, we were then led away to a darkened bedroom. There was an observer in the room as well as the ten of us. We were not allowed to leave the room for any reason. If we did leave we were required to stay out of the game.

Then after a period of time I think about 5 minutes we were told the scenario. The village we were in had been over run by militants. We had to maintain quite to avoid be detected and work out, who we were going to call, what we were going to say and how we were going to manage our supplies. We eventually sorted out the call issue.

Then we were told that there were five locals, 3 Christians whom we new and 2 we did not know. The ones we didn’t know didn’t speak a language we knew. Our group decided pretty quickly that we had to take them regardless of the security implications.

Throughout this period people were running outside the room pretending to be guards and a tape with war sounds was also running sporadically. We had to speak in whispers. Which made communication difficult as we were all extraverts who wanted to be involved in the decision making process.

Thankfully our group held fairly similar values and we decided that we had to help the locals. We thought through some of the implications of taking them but still decided it was the right thing to do.

After that we were told we had been discovered, and that the group was trying to negotiate a ransom with the government but that the government was not going to pay. There was an immediate sense of relief as we didn’t have to hide anymore. We talked more normally after this.

Then two guys in balaclavers with fake guns stormed into the room pointing a gun in one of our group members faces saying how the government must think we were worthless because they were unwilling to pay a ransom for us.

Sometime after this we decided if it was real we would pray to God about it. Instead we elected to pray for persecuted Christians throughout the world. Later we had to decide three people to be released. When it came to being released we decided one parent should go and one of the parents shouldn’t. This was because we knew that we couldn’t trust our captors. It was decided that one of the men should go along to because of the chance of rape. I tossed a coin with another guy for that.

Latter they reduced the number down to two. Then after that they said we had to chose two people to be executed. I was willing to go. It was interesting when someone said we shouldn’t actually make the decision of who goes because then we are playing there game and giving them power. I agreed with that opionion. However before we got a chance to decide on that we were interrupted by the return of the armed men. Two members of our group an older man and an older woman got up before any of us had a chance to go or say anything.

In the end the scenario finished there, they were used in the simulation for a fake execution , which resulted in getting the money from a third party.

We then had a bit of a debrief session. It wasn’t long enough but I did have the opportunity to talk to members of my group afterwards.

Last night I really needed to talk to some friends back home, which I did. I didn’t really need to talk about what happened mainly I just needed to get grounded in reality and or something.

Anyway it was certainly an interesting experience.

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