SELCO: The Importance of Friends and Family When the SHTF

[livingston]

SELCO: The Importance of Friends and Family When the SHTF
In one of the previous articles, I mentioned how to deal with people who might show up on your doorstep once when SHTF, looking for help from you. And I mentioned that a lot of people worry about the fact that their friends and family will be among those people.
I was talking a few days ago with a friend about the issue of friends and family when SHTF. I realized that some 15 years ago if something serious happened, some event that needed a strong group of bonded people in order to overcome that event (riots, serious weather event, disruption of law and order, war…) I could count probably on 15 people I really trusted, organizing together with me in a very short period of time.

Today if something serious happened, I can count maybe on 5 or 6 people.

The topic that cannot be separated from that is trust, and it is something to think about (and write) here.

The Importance of Friends & Family When the SHTF - The Organic Prepper

 

[Saltwater60]

I would do my family, my parents, my in laws, my brother and sister in law times two and that’s about it. Oh maybe the people a crossed the street from me.

My dads a cop and my mom has tons of food stashed. My mother in laws a nurse and has done many missions trips and had to nurse without the proper gear. My father in laws has tons of tools, guns, and ammo. My brother in law is an engineer and can fix lots of things. My other brother in law was in the army and can fuck some things up. The people a crossed the street are useless liberals other than they are nurses and a physicians assistant. Also need enough eyes to watch the homestead.

 

[Drinkthekoolaid]

Its really a compounding problem.

If things get bad enough then you need 24/7 guard details and that takes a lot of man power.

To feed the people it will require a lot of farming/gardening/hunting/fishing/scavenging which also creates a new demand for a lot of man power.

So before long you are going to be trying to set up some sort of self sufficient enclave/tribe/group that's is much bigger than you were expecting.


You just have to hope the people you chose are useful and have skills and they are trustworthy and reliable.

 

[livingston]

Its really a compounding problem.

If things get bad enough then you need 24/7 guard details and that takes a lot of man power.

To feed the people it will require a lot of farming/gardening/hunting/fishing/scavenging which also creates a new demand for a lot of man power.

So before long you are going to be trying to set up some sort of self sufficient enclave/tribe/group that's is much bigger than you were expecting.


You just have to hope the people you chose are useful and have skills and they are trustworthy and reliable.

And we all know friends that have no skill set in such situations and will look to each of us for help. ... I might have posted this story where a prepper said to one friend he could come to his place during Katrina and the friend showed up with 3 0r 4 other families all unknown to the prepper . ... Did not think you would mind was the comment when they arrived .. NO one had any cash and no charge or debt cards would work .... As they were drawn on local banks that were possibly under water ..

 

[masterswimmer]

...I might have posted this story where a prepper said to one friend he could come to his place during Katrina and the friend showed up with 3 0r 4 other families all unknown to the prepper . ... Did not think you would mind was the comment when they arrived .. NO one had any cash and no charge or debt cards would work .... As they were drawn on local banks that were possibly under water ..

No punchline to the story? Did the prepper take in the leeches?

 

[livingston]

No punchline to the story? Did the prepper take in the leeches?

Lessons from Katrina
Lessons from Katrina - Southern Belle Prepper
The person who wrote this had his own site ...Here is the story...

 

[livingston]

Circle of friends | Backwoods Home Magazine
Circle of friends
The importance of other people
in our preparedness plans
By Claire Wolfe



Issue #111 • May/June, 2008

Hardcore survivalists cherish what I call the “George Romero Scenario.” It goes like this: The proverbial poop has hit the propeller. Cities collapse into chaos. But we, the prepared, are…well, we’re prepared. We hunker in our rural bunkers, clutching our Super Whiz-Whacker 3000 combat arms, eagle-eyed and ready for any eventuality. We boldly fend off wave after ravenous wave of starving city folk who stagger at us like unstoppable zombies in a Romero horror flick. These zombies crave not our living flesh, but our six-gallon, mylar-lined superpails of dried lentils, our root cellars full of last year’s carrots, and our genuine, federally issued Meals Ready to Eat.

Well…maybe.

Seriously, it could happen. I can laugh about it now only because I spent so many years envisioning it myself.

We buy into the Hollywood-fed lone-wolf image. Our society is no longer built on everyday trust and neighborly reliance. The world is full of unfriendly strangers. If the other guy doesn’t take care of himself…well, then to hell with him. It’s dog eat dog. Survival of the fittest.

Us or them!

And it’s true; in any major, long-term disaster, prepared people genuinely could face “zombie” threats from the desperate unprepared. But those threats—as we shall see further down—are likely to take a form that George Romero wouldn’t find very cinematic.

The fact is, for most of us rural people, one of the biggest things we’re going to face in event of a major or minor disaster is this: a need to cooperate with others who are in the same boat and who share similar privations.

Other people are not the enemy. They may be our lifeline—and we theirs. We need a circle of well-prepared friends more than we’re likely to need a .50 cal long-range scoped rifle with a muzzle brake that has “Have a nice day” carved into it.

Making connections
Here’s a preparedness truth we should all tattoo on our minds: No matter how well prepared we think we are, we will lack something. It may be something obvious. It may be something obscure. It may be something we forgot to prepare for. It may be something we had that got lost, damaged, or used up. But we will lack something.

My isolated corner of the world got hit with a horrific windstorm a few months ago. Nothing moved or functioned for days afterward. Every one of my off-grid neighbors ran out of gasoline for their generators and chain saws.

A friend of mine once needed to administer first aid following an earthquake. When he opened his recently store-bought first-aid kit, he discovered that items in it were years beyond their expiration dates and that liquids had leaked all over the bandages and dried into a disgusting crust.

After the big windstorm I smacked into a different kind of problem. Physically I was fine. I had heat, food, shelter, and safety. But emotional numbness made it hard to make decisions. If not for a resourceful neighbor who offered to trade his chainsaw and fence-repair skills for the remnants of my damaged yurt, I might still be sitting here staring stupidly at storm wreckage. I lacked something I could not buy.

The government would ask us to turn to them when our own preparedness fails. But waiting for FEMA or the National Guard delays help. Telling us to wait tells us to be passive. It tells us to rely on “experts” and outsiders. That’s exactly what we don’t need when everything suddenly goes to hell on us.

The government asks us to behave like dependent children at exactly the moment our best adult skills are demanded of us.

I was lucky to have a hardworking young neighbor to trade with. But it was luck. Well, not 100 percent luck. I was smart enough to live in a community with a strong ethic of mutual help. Smart enough to have the kind of friends who carry chainsaws in their trucks.

Yet it was luck for the whole community that the gas stations started functioning just a few days later. Luck that the grocery store didn’t run out of food. Luck that very few people were injured. And this is the kind of luck we simply can’t count on.

We need to start preparing to count on each other. We need to get together with neighbors and friends and enhance each other’s preparedness—not out of altruism, but out of pure practicality. We need to do it so that we’ll all be better off in a crunch
More at ...
Circle of friends | Backwoods Home Magazine