How should you position your body and stance to minimize exposure risk when deploying OC spray outdoors?

• A. Stand with feet together and face target
• B. Maintain stable footing, protect your face with hands or shield if possible, avoid pointing at yourself, and keep your body angled away from the wind
• C. Turn your back to the wind
• D. Bend knees deeply and spin around

Answer: (B)

Stability and wind awareness are the key ideas here. Use a balanced, athletic stance—feet roughly shoulder-width apart with knees slightly bent—to stay grounded and ready to adjust if the situation changes. Protect your face with your hands or a shield whenever possible to reduce direct exposure and give you a barrier against irritant spray.

Avoid pointing the spray back toward yourself; directing the plume away from you helps prevent the mist from drifting back and hitting your face or eyes. Position your body so you’re angled away from the wind, which helps push the spray toward the target and away from you, reducing the chance of re-entry onto you.

These elements—stable footing, facial protection, keeping the spray away from yourself, and angling relative to the wind—work together to minimize exposure risk. Standing with feet together undermines balance, turning your back to the wind can let spray blow back onto you, and bending and spinning around would compromise control and visibility.