Self defense against terrorist knife attack

On the last May 1 holiday, I went to Guangzhou for holidays. A minor incident happened when I took the subway to the train station heading back. It was the golden holiday and the subway was crowded. I managed to get inside the jam-packed train while standing precariously with my back facing the closing door. When the door was closing, some people rushed in, pushed me in and gave me a heavy bump. I had to steady myself making leverage with my rooted front foot and me left hands' fingers striking the closing door once to give a balancing force so that I would not be pushed against the ladies standing in front of me. I was not pleased. Much to my surprise, a male voice in my back yelled out accusing me striking him with my elbow! "Come on, you bumped onto me!" I replied. He wouldn't stop cursing me with abusive language, and his wife joined in. Thanks to my meditative practice, I was not annoyed and kept my mouth shut after stating my position on the issue. Without me joining in the chorus, the couple finally stopped cursing me. I didn't want a fight, which is not an uncommon ending in situations like this.

Minor incident as I said. Reconstructing the incident again back home, I think the poor guy's rib cage did bumped right onto my left elbow when I tried to balance myself with my left hand.

A few days later, I read the news that the Guangzhou station had a terrorist attack whereby four Xinjiang men chopped up people. Six were wounded, one of the strikers was killed, one arrested. Scary news of terrorist attack for political reason. Luckily it didn't happen on the day I was there.

We can avoid a fight in conflict situation, but we cannot avoid a terrorist who happened to decide to chop up people! Let's forget about the political issue of whether the terrorists were also the oppressed (act of terrorism cannot be forgiven even with a good cause), as common citizens, we have no choice but to defend ourselves in such situation.

A counter-terrorist attack expert in China has the following advice to common citizens for knife attack:

1. Run away as quickly as you can
2. Failing that pick up some hard object (like a chair, a stick..), and use it to protect yourself when the attacker chops
3. Failing that (i.e. no hard objects around), protect your vital parts with your arms - in particular your neck and your abdomen. Knife strikes at those areas can be fatal.

Well, the expert didn't advise us to enrol in a martial art school to learn simple steps as how to disarm the knife of an attacker. The fact is the police won't do that, they simply shot him down.

Simple steps?