Posted: 2/16/2013 6:57:25 PM EDT
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You dont want to be the only house with light at night on your street.
You dont want to be the house with smoke coming from the chimney in a hard winter when your neighbor is freezing to death. Could you turn away a man with small children begging for food? Do you want to be seen as having food enough to give away? What are you going to say when they come back with 20 friends with some guns? Badasses dont respond, we all know your Rambo enough as it is. |
| Blackout curtains on the big windows and blocked off the small basement windows. Ventless gas heater in the basement so if the gas is still flowing we will have heat. As comfortable as I am bugging in, if the event is big enough they shut down the natural gas pipelines then I will be long gone to the BOL where the chance of encountering another human is minimal. |
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I acutally got into an arguement with my girlfriends coworkers. Her co worker things its not her problem being prepared or being ready. That help will arive, or that if something does get bad she can just come to our place because she knows we have stuff.
then later on said she would do anything to protect her kids but she hates the idea of guns. this is the kind of woman that things the entire world is fricken unicorns and butterflys. I said no way would I let you into my house, Poor planning on your part does not make a Emergency on my part, I said I would have no problem turning them away. if anything I may be able to help the kids they are young (3sh) because I know they do not need as much as food and such. And yes I would feel slightly bad about the kids because they can not help that the poor planning of the parents is causing the issue. Only people I would give my help to is people that in some way shape or form can help me back. I do not want to give help and my time and energy for people that have no willingness to have the basic things needed to survive. |
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You dont want to be the only house with light at night on your street.. Heavy curtains, probably at this point would have the windows barricaded anyways (my house has almost as many interior doors as windows, so that's what I plan to use)... You dont want to be the house with smoke coming from the chimney in a hard winter when your neighbor is freezing to death That's a tough one... It would depend on the situation... If the outside has become a jungle and it would attract too much unwanted attention, I would layer up on clothing and be a little cold in exchange for safety... Could you turn away a man with small children begging for food? Do you want to be seen as having food enough to give away? What are you going to say when they come back with 20 friends with some guns? This is the real tough one... In a total survival situation, all I care about is my wife and kids... Letting go of the last bit of humanity in ourselves is the hardest part, and turning away hungry kids would be hard... But letting them in would in any way jeopardize my family's security, I (think) would be able to do it... Unless the visitors have some service/skill/supplies to contribute.... IDK, maybe I'm just too practical.... The best approach I can come up with (and I have put some serious thought in all these scenarios and then some) it be flexible... Have a plan A, B, C and D, ALWAYS!!!! Care to share your thoughts? |
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One more little pearl...
My wife and I were watching this History channel show/what-to-do documentary about a SHTF scenario... At one point, they stop on a deserted highway to help an injured man, despite the dangers... My first instinct was immediately to say "Stupid, stay in the car and keep going..." At the end of the show, the "main character" and his family get into a bad situation, and the guy that they helped days earlier comes around and saves them... It got me thinking about helping others, and how sometimes it does have a positive influence in our own survival... My point is, if you help that family with the hungry kids, you never know if later you will need help and they will be able to provide it for you... Although because of my job and personal experiences I see most of the "shallow end of the gene pool", and I'm usually inclined to think people don't deserve to be helped, I still believe that there is some hope in the world... If not, what is the reason to keep surviving... Sorry to get off the topic a little... |
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You dont want to be the only house with light at night on your street. You dont want to be the house with smoke coming from the chimney in a hard winter when your neighbor is freezing to death. Could you turn away a man with small children begging for food? Do you want to be seen as having food enough to give away? What are you going to say when they come back with 20 friends with some guns? Badasses dont respond, we all know your Rambo enough as it is. 1)What makes you think you'll be the only house with light on the street? Other peopel have generators, here's other ways of making light. 2)Study previous similar events. You have a chimney? That means you live somewhere where others have them too and they will burn everything down to the trees from parks and streets, books and furniture to stay warm if they have to. No matter how much you store, eventually you'll run out too. 3)Yes. No, you dont want to be seen as the guy with stuff when most others have nothing, keep your mouth shut and dont do charity from your front door! I'm not saying anything, but defending myself as best as I can, same thing as if 4 guys come trying to hurt me and my family now. If you are so well prepared that the human wrecks around you want to eat your bones, then you probably shoudl have prepared better for getting the hell out of there before it gets that bad! You just cannot win a one man fight or a one famly or household fight against everyone around you. You bug in until its no longer safe, clearly the scenario you present implies that you shoudl have bug out to a better location long ago. Buggin out isnt the solution for everythgin just like bugging in does work all the time. Its not unlike asking what do you do when your house burns down, how do you bug in then? Well, you dont! FerFAL |
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You dont want to be the only house with light at night on your street. You dont want to be the house with smoke coming from the chimney in a hard winter when your neighbor is freezing to death. Could you turn away a man with small children begging for food? Do you want to be seen as having food enough to give away? What are you going to say when they come back with 20 friends with some guns? Badasses dont respond, we all know your Rambo enough as it is. I would Everyone around me has a chimney so I would suspect there would be a lot of people burning wood in the winter. Yes I can turn a man away with small children begging for food.It would not be easy but if it means my family survival then it is a no brainier. |
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Living in an apartment sucks for these reasons
No firepit Close neighbors No garden Generator is too loud No place to bug out to besides extended family who all live more urban than me If I see 20 guys with guns I will try to convince them I have no food, if that doesn't work then ill probably be dead before I could convince them Last thing I would ever want is a shootout |
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Quoted: Living in an apartment sucks for these reasons No firepit Close neighbors No garden Generator is too loud No place to bug out to besides extended family who all live more urban than me If I see 20 guys with guns I will try to convince them I have no food, if that doesn't work then ill probably be dead before I could convince them Last thing I would ever want is a shootout when i lived in apt.'s my ROE went from stealth mode to de ass while bristling with spikes dont come near me or you die mode . my AO was the reason and the idea of roving armed peoples wasnt outta the question. it was de ass any way i could screw anyone either down range or in front of my truck. sounds bad but i wasnt gonna get stuck mid day in the bakara market  find a bol..or buy one,rent one etc....that or shore up the apt. anyway you can and be ready to either fight or deal your way around things. i dont see the second going very far though with some types once they think you have stuff. |
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Quoted: yippy skippyYou dont want to be the only house with light at night on your street. black out curtains are your friend along with light discipline You dont want to be the house with smoke coming from the chimney in a hard winter when your neighbor is freezing to death. use different heating methods besides wood and climatize yourself to live with minimal amounts of heat/ac Could you turn away a man with small children begging for food? Do you want to be seen as having food enough to give away? What are you going to say when they come back with 20 friends with some guns? yes i could and i dont see them just knocking on my door.. i have old..i mean old food for hand outs as " thats all i got" - read 20 yr old mre's and cheap can goods. if 20 folks with guns show up, well i guess they can have my home/bol...then ill just take my sweet time taking it back.... Badasses dont respond, we all know your Rambo enough as it is. some realities may sound ramboish, but truth be told in your scenerio's lots of tough calls are to be made. my family and thier safty comes 1st. that means i have to adapt as things happen...if that means de assing my home as 20 raiders head up the road, then ambushing their asses and just go all john rambo on them i may do just that..if it means letting a kid and the dad starve to stay safe i will....again im willing to bend..... |
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This is a tough one. I'm not sure I could turn a little kid away, and yes I do have a lot of old (Y2k) stored stuff for giveaways..
The problem with living in a rural area is that everyone knows me and knows what I am into. Balancing that is the fact that I have a reputation as a heartless SOB, slightly "different" man who doesn't give a fuck. That deters some, and kinda eliminates the casual approach. If they come at me here, they will come in force I suppose. We will do what we have to do, when the time comes. I don't think I could send a little kid away hungry, even if the parents are idiots. Likewise, neighbors here help each other. I suspect that the troublemakers will be eliminated quickly while the rest of us come up wit a barter economy.. Ops |
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Quoted: This is a tough one. I'm not sure I could turn a little kid away, and yes I do have a lot of old (Y2k) stored stuff for giveaways.. The problem with living in a rural area is that everyone knows me and knows what I am into. Balancing that is the fact that I have a reputation as a heartless SOB, slightly "different" man who doesn't give a fuck. That deters some, and kinda eliminates the casual approach. If they come at me here, they will come in force I suppose. We will do what we have to do, when the time comes. I don't think I could send a little kid away hungry, even if the parents are idiots. Likewise, neighbors here help each other. I suspect that the troublemakers will be eliminated quickly while the rest of us come up wit a barter economy.. Ops Same here Ops, I just don't have that in me. |
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I've had thoughts on those same "difficult" subjects. My answers will be for either an extreme SHTF or an EOTWAWKI event rather than a 6.0 earthquake knocking a bridge down and dropping the power lines for the weekend.
I have lots of food - hundreds of meals and hundreds of gallons of water. Plenty enough to share and in the past I have thought about sharing some while keeping some ... until I read the SHTFschool web site which got me to thinking. Three of my neighbors are pretty good people, we watch each other's homes, help each other out and they'll be on the ones I make sure are fine after my family. Beyond that those second thoughts come about as the SHTFschool taught me that if you're helping the ten homes around you they're telling ten other families that Paul has lots of food ... so now there's a hundred people at your door. Some of that wider crowd might want to steal by force your stuff. The one bad apple in the bunch. If I share things it will be one or two things at a time. I'm not going to be breaking out a couple cases of MRE meals and putting them on the front porch. I'll be trading them for gasoline out of the vehicles (you do have a siphon don't you?) to run my generator. I'll run the generator during the day charging up the 15Kw/hr UPS system to run quietly at night. We'll cook in the backyard on the barbecue grills and keep a lower profile that way cooking in minutes, not hours and eating behind fences. I plan on retreating to our smallest bedroom which has three interior walls - one is the garage, one a bathroom, and the third toward the interior of the house. It sits on the east side of the house (cooler here in the south) and has but one window which I will black out after dark. This location gives us the most protection from gun fire and keeps our noise and movement signature lowest. My amateur radio shack sits in the garage - the UHF/VHF antenna area wee bit difficult to hide but I will black out the garage windows there too. That small bedroom is rigged for a tiny 650 watt air conditioner which sits in the garage. An air conditioned room would be a heaven during a few months a year here but we'll using window and popsicle fans otherwise. Recently we had our first power outage after dark in 10 years. I fired up my UPS system and put one light in the living room and lit up my LED lanterns. I went across the street with a couple of spare lights to check on the old retired disable vet, the widow next door, and the third family one door over and all were fine and had lights and everything was fine. Sort of re-enforcing the bond between the families of the home owners. About two hours later the power was back up, a drunk had managed to hit a power pole hard enough to endanger it. |
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One more little pearl... My wife and I were watching this History channel show/what-to-do documentary about a SHTF scenario... At one point, they stop on a deserted highway to help an injured man, despite the dangers... My first instinct was immediately to say "Stupid, stay in the car and keep going..." At the end of the show, the "main character" and his family get into a bad situation, and the guy that they helped days earlier comes around and saves them... It got me thinking about helping others, and how sometimes it does have a positive influence in our own survival... My point is, if you help that family with the hungry kids, you never know if later you will need help and they will be able to provide it for you... Although because of my job and personal experiences I see most of the "shallow end of the gene pool", and I'm usually inclined to think people don't deserve to be helped, I still believe that there is some hope in the world... If not, what is the reason to keep surviving... Sorry to get off the topic a little... If I am going to stop to help someone when the world has gone to hell, it's going to have to be a real good looking naked woman! However, until then, if I see someone in serious trouble I'll stop to help. But then I'm an experienced ex ghetto cop, carry a 40 and bad guys don't like me very much.  .
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You dont want to be the only house with light at night on your street. You dont want to be the house with smoke coming from the chimney in a hard winter when your neighbor is freezing to death. Could you turn away a man with small children begging for food? Do you want to be seen as having food enough to give away? What are you going to say when they come back with 20 friends with some guns? Badasses dont respond, we all know your Rambo enough as it is. You can't see my windows or chimney from the street. Sometimes, having a 600ft driveway is a very good thing. One of the things I was looking for when we bought this property was a house set back from the road. We live near the end of a dead end, go nowhere non county street. The closest county road is 2 miles away, and it doesn't go anywhere either. |
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Why are you even answering the door? This. I try to spend time outside...? Answering the door for someone you're not expecting, under (in this hypothetical) distressed societal conditions, doesn't seem wise. You're welcome to get all the fresh air you want at other times. |
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This....sort of. 
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I have a soft spot for kids. I can't say no to them if I see them starving or otherwise in need of something vital. They are innocent (as much as humans can be) and defenseless, and they need someone to look out for them. I am also a Christian. I'd rather die with a clear conscience than die wondering if I could have done something differently. I am going to die either way, the only question is when and how.
That said... I am not a freaking idiot. I am not going to put myself out there and risk my own family simply because some idiot next door or down the street figured Obama would be there to save his ass when the chips were down. I am charitable, but I don't run a charity. I might decide to feed the kids, but on my own terms, and that doesn't include opening up my home to them. Or even letting their parents know it's happening or where it's coming from. I believe in using OPSEC to avoid those situations in the first place. No one around you needs to know what you have or can do, before or after an event. |
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This all presupposes that SHTF and you still haven't gone to white pages and pulled up the names and phone numbers of all your immediate and second street over neighbors.... and that on day 3 of SHTF you didn't start organizing with some of the more put together guys - the ones who have their generators running, and chain saws, and backhoes/4x4s...
if it gets to week 2 and the lights aren't on state-wide such that a lone stand out home would attract potential attackers then having spent the first 13 days hunkered down and anonymous, ignorant of your immediate neighbors and would-be allies will prove fatal. So the real question is... come SHTF how much (and how soon) do you reveal the full extent of your preps? it's always better to keep some heirlooms buried or hidden which can be used for bartering/bribing/leverage to keep the wolves at bay in the hopes of getting something in exchange for your good pleasure. So say, you let on that you have some MREs or Mountain house but not about the buckets and buckets of rice and beans..... or you admit to 1 month's worth of staples but use that admission to organize foraging parties, trappers, fishers, hunters.... or you share a 'social justice' bin of Ramen and spam plus TP and tea bags with 1-2 decent but unlucky neighbors in exchange for 1 month of good will.... That keeps at least two families from snooping but also gives you 2 weeks to think of options before that bin runs low and they start to panic. (point being.... if they deplete their pantry supplies, can't find more on the black market at any price and have 2 weeks left of the 4 you gave them...they'll start to panic and righly so. Depending on how much you trust them, reveal more....take them into the clan so to speak. Or fake like you're going on a one-man resupply mission for them from "an old crazy war buddy of mine" and come back with your supplies.... pushing their day of reconing off a week or two and buying you two weeks of peace (plus planting the seed that you know someone with food and other skillz....) Bluffing works wonders in lots of situations. But so does having a clan of extended families and strong men.... or credible threat thereof. |