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- Feb 1, 2018
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From Ol’ Remus at http://www.woodpilereport.com/
The dark and dangerous times following a catastrophic collapse are often imagined as violence without direction or purpose, save momentary advantage and survival. For most it serves well as a working assumption when norms, violated more than observed, cease to be norms. But like anything else, chaos comes in grades and flavors. There is survival value in knowing what they've been in the past.
Roaming refugees. These are the locusts that swarm after a collapse, able to strip a community by weight of numbers. Typically hungry, desperate, leaderless and abandoned by leadership material, they're drifters and opportunists. Small communities are overrun and looted in the manner of a flash mob. Bug-in preppers are the bon bons of preference for the more capable among them. Well sited survival communities are unlikely to be in the path of roaming refugees.
Gangs. Existing gangs are specialists dependent on a functioning urban environment. Once the cities and suburbs are stripped, "street smarts" are useless and they become parasites without a host. Surviving famine and scarcity takes a different set of skills, and the learning curve is steep. Ethnocentric gangs are most likely to remain intact, but most likely to attack each other. Pointlessly aggressive and impatient by nature, they're a more dangerous subset of roaming refugees. The more ambitious gangs are marauders in the making. A survival community should overestimate their capabilities.
Marauders. In war, marauders are bands of military adventurers that strike at unexpected targets from an unexpected direction in unexpected ways. Unlike commandos deployed against high value targets, the marauder has a general mandate best described as "extreme cost effectiveness". Seasoned marauders are inventive, patient, and have an almost otherworldly ability to sniff out opportunity. The safer a survival community believes itself to be, the more vulnerable it is to marauders.
Partisans. At the outset these will be existing militia, typically modelled as light infantry except without recourse to heavy weapons support, self-armed and trained primarily as skirmishers. Their first task is likely to be defending their home community from roaming refugees and gangs. As the emergency devolves other partisans will arise, some as patriotic resistance outfits, some as mercenaries for warlords with territorial ambitions, some warranting response in kind and some qualifying as candidates for an alliance. Partisans see a survival community as a source of supplies and recruits, either theirs or their enemy's.
Government and quasi-government. Drastic downsizing will pressure fiefdoms with overlapping authority to battle for supremacy. Even within government no one will be sure who is king and who is not king. Subjugating and exploiting the productive territories that sustain them will be government's only real job. The classic morphing of government will accelerate—every bureaucracy wants to be a police force, every police force wants to be an army. Martial law is a given, there will be no civil liberties. A survival community careless enough to draw their attention will have some hard times ahead.
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I’d like to add to that list:
(I borrowed some of this from one of my previous posts, so my apologies if some of this is familiar to you.)
Walmartians (those who are dependent on Walmart being open 24/7):
You have preps and the Walmartians down the road are wild-eyed because their pantries are bare... It will eventually be apparent to anyone with eyes that you and yours are better fed than most. Hmmm... what then?
The best way to winning a gunfight is not being a target. I want to look like I don’t have anything worth fighting for. No food, no nuthin’, just like them.
I have in my preps oversized clothing to look like I have lost some weight, just like everyone else. I also have a stash of makeup that I can use to appear to look gaunt. It is incredibly amazing how just how far a bit of applied deception can go... A little hint of brown under the eyes, and just under the cheekbones can do wonders. No makeup handy? Well-placed smudges of ashes and charcoal from burnt wood works well. (I already use this instead of spending money on commercial camo face stuff in the deer woods, lol.)
Other survivalists:
Please forgive me for bringing to light this disturbing info, but it needs saying: More than a few times over the years, I have read polls and comments from posters on several survivor-type forums that caused me to lose sleep. Cannibalism IS in the plans of more that a few people...I was shocked at the sheer number of people who said they would do such a thing, and how... oh geeze. I can't unsee this, so I prepped for that too.
OK then, hopefully, my theatrical makeup will come in handy in that department too. Who wants to eat long pork that is infected with boils or some weird looking disease, and looks quite sick? And smells like poop, too? (If the going gets that bad, I plan on smearing a few pieces of cloth with dung, and tucking it here and there in my clothes, if needed.) I will resort to anything to be as unappetizing as possible.
Don’t think it will ever come to that? More than a few historical accounts strongly suggest it will be very likely, especially given the current lack of humanity during these “good times.”
And, one day there may be serious shortage of firepower... What are your plans, then?
Do you have anything like “Plan F” in place for security/defense? If not, this might be a good time to explore Plan A, B, C..... F
As in last-ditch options.
What say you?
The dark and dangerous times following a catastrophic collapse are often imagined as violence without direction or purpose, save momentary advantage and survival. For most it serves well as a working assumption when norms, violated more than observed, cease to be norms. But like anything else, chaos comes in grades and flavors. There is survival value in knowing what they've been in the past.
Roaming refugees. These are the locusts that swarm after a collapse, able to strip a community by weight of numbers. Typically hungry, desperate, leaderless and abandoned by leadership material, they're drifters and opportunists. Small communities are overrun and looted in the manner of a flash mob. Bug-in preppers are the bon bons of preference for the more capable among them. Well sited survival communities are unlikely to be in the path of roaming refugees.
Gangs. Existing gangs are specialists dependent on a functioning urban environment. Once the cities and suburbs are stripped, "street smarts" are useless and they become parasites without a host. Surviving famine and scarcity takes a different set of skills, and the learning curve is steep. Ethnocentric gangs are most likely to remain intact, but most likely to attack each other. Pointlessly aggressive and impatient by nature, they're a more dangerous subset of roaming refugees. The more ambitious gangs are marauders in the making. A survival community should overestimate their capabilities.
Marauders. In war, marauders are bands of military adventurers that strike at unexpected targets from an unexpected direction in unexpected ways. Unlike commandos deployed against high value targets, the marauder has a general mandate best described as "extreme cost effectiveness". Seasoned marauders are inventive, patient, and have an almost otherworldly ability to sniff out opportunity. The safer a survival community believes itself to be, the more vulnerable it is to marauders.
Partisans. At the outset these will be existing militia, typically modelled as light infantry except without recourse to heavy weapons support, self-armed and trained primarily as skirmishers. Their first task is likely to be defending their home community from roaming refugees and gangs. As the emergency devolves other partisans will arise, some as patriotic resistance outfits, some as mercenaries for warlords with territorial ambitions, some warranting response in kind and some qualifying as candidates for an alliance. Partisans see a survival community as a source of supplies and recruits, either theirs or their enemy's.
Government and quasi-government. Drastic downsizing will pressure fiefdoms with overlapping authority to battle for supremacy. Even within government no one will be sure who is king and who is not king. Subjugating and exploiting the productive territories that sustain them will be government's only real job. The classic morphing of government will accelerate—every bureaucracy wants to be a police force, every police force wants to be an army. Martial law is a given, there will be no civil liberties. A survival community careless enough to draw their attention will have some hard times ahead.
---------------------------
I’d like to add to that list:
(I borrowed some of this from one of my previous posts, so my apologies if some of this is familiar to you.)
Walmartians (those who are dependent on Walmart being open 24/7):
You have preps and the Walmartians down the road are wild-eyed because their pantries are bare... It will eventually be apparent to anyone with eyes that you and yours are better fed than most. Hmmm... what then?
The best way to winning a gunfight is not being a target. I want to look like I don’t have anything worth fighting for. No food, no nuthin’, just like them.
I have in my preps oversized clothing to look like I have lost some weight, just like everyone else. I also have a stash of makeup that I can use to appear to look gaunt. It is incredibly amazing how just how far a bit of applied deception can go... A little hint of brown under the eyes, and just under the cheekbones can do wonders. No makeup handy? Well-placed smudges of ashes and charcoal from burnt wood works well. (I already use this instead of spending money on commercial camo face stuff in the deer woods, lol.)
Other survivalists:
Please forgive me for bringing to light this disturbing info, but it needs saying: More than a few times over the years, I have read polls and comments from posters on several survivor-type forums that caused me to lose sleep. Cannibalism IS in the plans of more that a few people...I was shocked at the sheer number of people who said they would do such a thing, and how... oh geeze. I can't unsee this, so I prepped for that too.
OK then, hopefully, my theatrical makeup will come in handy in that department too. Who wants to eat long pork that is infected with boils or some weird looking disease, and looks quite sick? And smells like poop, too? (If the going gets that bad, I plan on smearing a few pieces of cloth with dung, and tucking it here and there in my clothes, if needed.) I will resort to anything to be as unappetizing as possible.
Don’t think it will ever come to that? More than a few historical accounts strongly suggest it will be very likely, especially given the current lack of humanity during these “good times.”
And, one day there may be serious shortage of firepower... What are your plans, then?
Do you have anything like “Plan F” in place for security/defense? If not, this might be a good time to explore Plan A, B, C..... F
As in last-ditch options.
What say you?
