So true. Add knowledge. Take knowledge of geology - someone describes to you what a drop stone is, and suddenly you can be looking at an exposed landscape and see hundreds of them. Before that, all you see is the landscape.

Add the fact that we're social animals, and that creates a filter that can be difficult to ignore. People will ignore safety advice if they think its socially expected. Take for example the recent nightclub fire in Russia - crowded nightclub, obviously not enough fire exits: an informed person's first impulse should be to leave the nightclub, miss the music, another day perhaps. Instead people want to stay and experience the music with the crowd. 113+ died.

I have a friend who relates it all back to the amygdala, an old, old part of our brains which I confess I still don't understand very well, but it pretty well controls how we deal with stress, conflict and challenges in life. But it can be summed up in the survival response, never underestimate the power of denial. A part of our consciousness constantly filters for what is important and what is perceived as not, and you can sometimes teach or trick it to filter differently, though acquisition of knowledge or occasional denial of our social instincts.

I think what's important here is having some sort of awareness in the first place, rather than just wandering through things.

To switch this from a gunfight to a dogfight analogy, it matters a whole lot less what airplane you're flying than it does whether or not you realize somebody is on your six. Once you realize somebody is on your six, it matters a whole lot more what your training is, than what your airplane is.

So maybe it's risk avoidance, risk awareness, and training...and training is preparing for situations that you're smart enough not to get yourself into in the first place.

While driving, I constantly scan the road at least a quarter mile to a half mile ahead to see what other drivers are doing. I also look in my rear view mirror for about 2 seconds and register what other drivers are doing behind me....mainly looking for drivers that are doing 10-15 mph over the limit, or more.
i remeber an incident where I was drivinga work van in Miami on I-95, and a large panel truck was in front of me. A door was up against the concrete barrier to my left. and as the panel truck sped past the door, the wind created by the truck picked the door up, which promptly hit the concrete barrier, the bounced right into my path. Luckily it was a hollow core door, and I hit it. Thankfully it wasn't edge on. I had less than a second to respond.
Since then, I don't drive against the barriers. I take the middle lane when possible. That way, there's a lane on either side if I need to take evasive action.

I don't know about alert level colour codes. I do understand that our senses are usually just monitoring changes.
Most sounds that are constant we blank out, if our eyes didn't move in small jumps constantly our vision would fade right out and there are optical illusions that demonstrate this.
http://www.planetperplex.com/en/color_illusions.html

I have no doubt you would get a rush of colours after being blindfolded for a while Dwest. It would probably last until your optical nerves got used to the colours again and renormalized them.
I will have to check this out and see if it is a real effect or just imaginary.

Awareness is not limited to risk or danger, of course. We can train to increase our awareness of resources and opportunities for better survival: water, food, shelter, first aid, signaling, navigation, etcetera.

I believe my alert conditions, as I stated, reflect the Col's scale okay. My application was in a much broader sense, in that I apply the threat conditions to more routine aspects than simply combat engagement as is his application. However, the intensity of the response is consistent with his.

For instance, out hunting, I can engage the target at range and move from an orange level to a red level with an advance warning, if I have the chance. If the point of contact with the target is abrupt, it takes a considerable effort NOT to shoot the target prior to positive identification. My instinct at that point is to sight and pull, much as I would be if I were to encounter an enemy under anticipated combat conditions but from an unknown source. Even under red conditions, I always thought the Col was adamant about target identification, so even though I am combat ready at any given point in the red zone, I must still exercise due diligence before committing to the attack; the point of no return as it were.

At least that's how I always considered the Col's scale to apply. It didn't make sense for a definition of the red zone to be as fleeting as just releasing the sear once you had sight picture acquired. That just seemed too transitory to be of practical use. It also doesn't quite seem to fit the mindset approach that the Col preferred, rather than to describe a given course of action.

So from a real world application in a general sense, I believe I tend towards the "ready for action, everyone around is a potential threat" when out in the open public, and relax to yellow under more controlled environments, but never ever in an unaware and unprepared mode, not even while sleeping. I'd have to be under the influence of sedatives or psychotropics to be in a condition white. My wife has learned that there are acceptable ways to rouse me from slumber, and those which she and others would not be advised to undertake. I have drawn down on someone coming through my front door while I was napping in my recliner before. Fortunately, they never repeated that method of entry. Most people who know me know better.

It is a bit inappropriate perhaps to try and apply the combat mindset color code of Col. Cooper's from a general purpose daily venue where the incidence of combat risk is relatively insignificant. However, lacking any other generally accepted "risk" level upon which to relate, this is at least marginally understandable.