Defending Yourself, Your Family, and Your Homestead after TSHTF

[rebecca100]

Okay I know some of you would not agree, but I think dogs come a long way for protection. They let you know if anyone is sneaking around and then perhaps discourage anyone from going any further. They also serve the purpose of protecting your livestock. A good dog would be in my opinion a must.

 

[sylvie]

I don't think it makes much difference how many meals you have stored. Day one would have me continuing to look to add to that rather than sitting back self satisfied. Having never gone through a Chili or Haiti experience, I would have no way of estimating how long my supplies would last.
Those with known stored goods would be considered the "new rich" and I don't mean this in a flattering way. People will always rationalize taking from the guy who they perceive can afford it. I saw that in the 70's and 80's. Orchards, corn fields and even backyard gardens were raided at night.
The cornfield or orchard is a couple acres so it:
a. must be owned by a rich guy
b. more than he need anyways
c. no one likes the guy who owns it; heard some story (rumor)about what a #*!* he is.
When they raid, they don't keep coming back each night for a little more so you can catch them- they clean it out in one fell swoop.

You can count on a black market developing if TSHTF.
Of course there's organized crime expanding to include food supplies as very profitable, filling a void for their other enterprises that dried up when TSHTF. They have to have their finger in the wind right now, same as us, and probably noting on these types of forums where the stuff will be and in what quantities. I think most of us are small potatoes right now but as things progress we will be the noveau riche.
No paranoia here, just looking for a lower profile. And JMO.

 

[Ldychef2k]

I sincerely believe that this is not a political issue, it is an economic one. Politics doesn't matter...survival does. Thinking beyond the boundaries of my home and my community, we are in serious trouble.

I wonder, if there actually DID come a time when people were desperate for food and water, etc., how far would they go to get what they needed? Would society deteriorate to the point that we saw in "After Armageddon", with looting and violence in our neighborhoods and on our farms? Could we see a time when armed citizens blocked roads to protect themselves, as in After Armageddon, or even the TV series Jericho?

Thinking realistically, what could a family actually do to protect themselves from a world gone mad?

Because I live just two blocks from a gang area, with a history of drive-by shoots and murders, I have to think about these things quite a lot. I have lived here 23 years and have watched the slow erosion of any sense of safety.

Are these fear tactics? Twenty-three years ago I would have thought so. But the times, they are a changin'. After the second time I came home to find a SWAT HQ set up in my front yard, I began to think "Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore".

The first signs of trouble aren't thugs in your yard with baseball bats. It's like the lobster in the cook pot: The economic deterioration is incremental and subtle. One small thing changes, and then another. And soon, to mix a metaphor, our gooses are collectively cooked.

We are given assurances that everything is fine, getting better, the recession is over, and soon all will be as it once was. If you don't believe that, you are wise. People are out of work and out of money. We know all too well that people are losing their homes. Last week, someone made a "glad" announcement that only 36,000 people nationwide lost their jobs that day. Not much of a reassurance!

Nationally, we are so deeply in debt that it is impossible to comprehend it all. Barring any changes, our national debt over the next ten years will rise to $12 trillion. Putting that in perspective, that's $1,720,000 PER MINUTE for ten years.

Globally, there is a lot of buzz that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Yesterday, China started talking about sanctions against U.S. interests, which is thought to be the first step toward demanding we settle our enormous debt with them. http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt shows that they have purchased 900 Billion in US treasury bonds alone. I am not sure how much we have borrowed aside from this. But if they called in our debt to them, that would be the end of us -- we just can't pay them.

I am doing what I can to be able to survive if TSHTF. I don't think it will be one big event that suddenly takes us to the brink of collapse, threatening personal safety. It will happen slowly, one lost job or foreclosure at a time. The foundation is already crumbling, and pretty much the only thing we can do on a personal level is make sure we can take care of our families and take strong measures in defending our property.

 

[On Our own]

As Ladychef pointed out SHTF is really a personal experience. It may not have happened to you but it has already happened to those people living in the tent cities across the US.

Consider checking out Neil Howe and the Fourth Turning. He started talking about the end of this cycle in 1997. So did Benjamin Barber and others who said we were near our end point. What the other side looks like is up to us. We have had our crises before. The Revolution was pretty nasty to those who lived through it. The Civil war (the only difference between a civil war and a revolution is who wins.....) The Depression/WWII ........

We're due. Some one said to me the other day, that I was crazy that this simply could not happen here. I said I bet that was what most of the people of germany thought, I bet most americans swore there would be no war before the civil war got rolling.... It can too happen. Instability is historically much more common than stability.

 

[Ldychef2k]

"It can't happen here" will do one thing: Assure that it happens here. I think that the ordinary person cannot even conceive of the vastness of what is happening to us economically. As I mentioned above, our debt is equal to $1.72 MILLION dollars a MINUTE. Who can really wrap their heads around that?

You know, I was just thinking about the people who feel that way (can't happen here), as well as those who feel that the Lord will take care of them. There is no doubt that He does that. I think it more likely that He gives us a warning, an inkling that we ought to be doing something.

Take Noah, for example. The Lord warned him the flood was coming and very clearly told Noah to prepare. In this case, the warning was the provision: Noah made the wise decision to heed that warning and he and his family, and ultimately the world as he knew it, was saved from death and destruction.

Anyway, my point is that if you know hard times are coming and you don't act, hopefully you will not end up like those who watched Noah build the ark, doing nothing or even scoffing as the preparations are made, and then going under as the boat floated away. For myself, I am not afraid to be ridiculed...and I DO get that a bit now and again, because I know that the Father has motivated me and has blessed my preparations in phenomenal ways.


Edited for typo.

 

[rty007]

Think it is wrong to compare WWII with revolution, what we are facing is revolution, WWII was purposely started by one man, planed by a couple but started as such, by one man. I think that If there was to be a SHTF event, which would not be climate-connected. I mean it would be started by people's action, it would be us(citizens) against them(government). If it were to be a climatic event, it would highly depend on the extent of damage. However I think that people would be willing to join their efforts to work for a better tomorrow.

 

[FarmerDenise]

If left to our own devices. We would be OK for a long time. But our community is already going downhill. No amount of arms is going to protect us under any circumstances. People perceive us as someone who has more than they, just because we live in a house and have a huge yard compared to many around here. They don't realize, that we have no money and that what we do have, we work hard for. We work hard and eat well.
We already have to be prepared to defend ourselves, our neighbors and our property. Right now, having my cell phone with the sheriff's phone number speed dialed in has worked so far. Knowing the neighbors has been effective too. When something happens outside, we all come out of our houses and have a look, we help each other and anyone on our street. We stick together, even if we don't always get along.
I intend to pack up and get out of town.

With all these earthquakes occurring recently, we were talking about how well prepared we are for one. We decided we should stock up on Coleman fuel and mantels for our lanterns and maybe get a couple of sacks of charcoal.
We currently have rainwater stocked in buckets and a barrel. It is not much, but it would certainly help us get by. I know of a well, where we could get more water for drinking, if need be.

 

[Blackbird]

http://i608.photobucket.com/albums/tt169/modern_pioneer/SS living/wolverines-1.jpg

This mixed with careful planning and attitude adjustment, the Army taught me a couple things.

He ended up dieing in that movie.

 

[patandchickens]

I wonder, if there actually DID come a time when people were desperate for food and water, etc., how far would they go to get what they needed? Would society deteriorate to the point that we saw in "After Armageddon", with looting and violence in our neighborhoods and on our farms? Could we see a time when armed citizens blocked roads to protect themselves, as in After Armageddon, or even the TV series Jericho? Thinking realistically, what could a family actually do to protect themselves from a world gone mad?

It baffles me that this is so often proposed as a "what if" "imagine" "what do you think would happen" hypothetical scenario.

It happens FAIRLY FREQUENTLY, has been happening since pretty much the beginning of human civilization and is happening TODAY in a number of places on the globe. Both in a sudden short-term sense, e.g. Haiti or other locations of sudden catastrophe, and in a long drawn out chronic sense, e.g. Somalia or other parts of Africa and some other places too.

You do not have to *wonder* what happens, you can SEE.

And you do not have to *hypothesize* what sort of preparations and actions and reactions work better or worse; you can see that too.

Basically, I defy you (edited to clarify: that's the generic plural you, not anyone in particular) to show me anywheres except some remote easily-defended places in Afghanistan or other highly remote mountainous terrain where individuals or single families are able to defend themselves for any substantial length of time by means of simple gunpower. It just does not happen. By and large, AFAIK, the things that seem to determine how well people come through periods like this (and by "periods" I mean anything from weeks to decades) until some order is restored:

-- chance. Happening to be in the right place according to the exact details of how things transpire; or, more importantly, NOT happening to be in the WRONG place. Right vs wrong place is largely unpredictable, it is chiefly a roll of the dice.

-- forming a cohesive group/community that can support and defend itself better than a smaller group of people could. And

-- negotiation and accommodation. Working out truces, trade agreements, pacts, mutually beneficial cooperation, etc with other individuals, groups and communities.

I do not include "preparation" in this list b/c it is a bit difficult to compare it to the situation in most of North America - practically everyone else on the planet *starts out from* a much greater basis of preparedness than yer average Joe American. So over here, yes, some degree of preparation is likely to have some importance. However, if you look at how "collapse of social order" and "civil unrest" and "civil war" and suchlike tend to proceed in other countries and at other times, it is really really not clear that hoarding stuff is really all THAT strong a determinant of outcome.

JMHO,

Pat

 

[Ldychef2k]

Hmm, I see your point, that we are able to see how disaster has affected places like Haiti and Somalia, so why try and imagine. But perhaps the difference is that Americans do not see themselves as living in a third world country (yet). Perhaps that is precisely why so many cannot visualize such devastation happening in the United States. And perhaps that is why the analogy falls apart. These third world countries are impoverished and could never had prepared themselves as we can. I wonder, don't you, that if after the disaster they suddnly had the means, would they prepare for a next time?

Let's think for a moment about Hurricaine Katrina and what happened to the people in NOLA and surrounding cities when she hit and in the aftermath. There was massive devastation, and for months, actually pretty much years, there were numerous citizens criticizing the government for not being fast enough to provide for them. For me, that is a major factor in my prepping: To take care of myself no matter what kind of disaster comes along, natural or man-made.

I happen to know, through preparedness websites, that there was an enormous disparity between the outcomes of people who didn't think there was anything to worry about, and those who have a preparedness mindset.

I know of a 15 year old kid who took very seriously the concept of being prepared as much as possible. His parents were unconcerned, so he basically turned his bedroom into a prep room, with food and water, a couple of ways to cook food, blankets, first aid supplies, etc. Where other kids had sports equipment, he had bottled water. When Katrina hit, he and his family were able to survive because he had prepared for the unknown.

You are right that it would be difficult to defend one's property completely. With the breakdown of society comes lawlessness. One can have a boatload of weapons, but one cannot patrol the land 24/7. It isn't possible to protect the homestead 100% of the time; you have to sleep, for example!

But neither do I see as practical a plan which depends upon others, even with a cohesive post-apocalyptic community attempting to operate in an orderly, civilized fashion. When the reality of what it means to have a societal collapse really sinks in, there will be some who go completely rogue. Some of them will be higher ups in these communities, some will simply be threats. I would never join up with unrelated others when the survival of my family is at stake. They have not earned my trust, and they are every bit as concerned with their own provision as I am with mine. They won't put my family first, they will work for their own.

The condition of the human heart is of significant concern and requires consideration. We may think we know how we would react in crisis, but there is no way to anticipate the behavior of others. How much more safe we will be if we expect and prepare for the worst?

Gotta run...no time to proof, so this may not have made a lick of sense.