"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." –General James "Mad Dog" Mattis

While rare, violence often strikes when you least expect it. To counter violent attacks, you need to be fast and furious. Hand-to-hand combatives are a great tool to have up your sleeve to quickly dispatch an attacker, but you should always be looking for force multipliers—tools that make your counterattacks even more painful, damaging, and effective.

Having some sort of defensive weapon—be it a firearm, knife, or spray—as part of your EDC is never a bad idea, but sometimes you don't have one on you (like when you're in an area that prohibits weapons), your attacker has taken or knocked your weapon away, or you're in a position that makes drawing your weapon hard to do.

Thankfully, you're constantly surrounded by potential weapons that can be quickly accessed to counter violent attacks. To find and employ them, you just need to hone the most important weapon in your arsenal—your mind.

In the right hands, seemingly innocuous, everyday items can be turned into lethal weapons. Such a transformation just requires violating those objects' Aristotelian telos—the end for which they were made. If your life is on the line, I don't think old Aristotle would mind.

Below we offer 12 suggestions of everyday objects that can be turned into improvised weapons. Use this as a jumping off point to think of how other objects could save your life in a pinch. When you're out and about in public, practice scanning your environment and considering what might be used as a weapon if needed. Think of it as creating mental models for your OODA Loop so you can win the fight if/when it comes your way.