Somebody calls a neighborhood meeting, and declaring himself the chairman...

[Sourdough]

My guess is few people have much experience with people going from what passes for normal to instant rage in a mega second. Yes we all experience people getting P.O.ed or slowly getting madder and madder. But I have in 74 years only had a couple of experiences where someone went "Straight" to rage. Talking quivering-shaking- mind and body out of control "Rage".

My guess this is a somewhat common experience for Law Enforcement Officers to encounter. But my point is for most of us we are not prepared for that instant explosion. Tell someone who's children are starving to death and comes begging you for any food you can offer, be well prepared for their reaction if you state, you honestly have none to spare.

This in a nutshell is primary motivation to live far from other humans. They are slightly less predictable then Grizzly Bears as far as behavior.

 

[Aerindel]

In the last 20 years or more most people have not worked. Oh, many have had jobs but there was no physical labor involved in those jobs. Nothing bad about that, it is just the nature of jobs now and those jobs needed people to "work" them. All that is fine and we can move forward as a nation.
But if a long term TEOTWAWKI comes along everything changes. Everyone then has to work very hard to survive in that kind of a situation. Also it will soon become apparent to all that if they want to survive they will have to work very hard every day until the day they die.
How many people will accept that reality?
How many will fight to avoid that reality?
How many will just commit suicide?
It will be the dying time and it will last for well over a year and I could see it lasting a couple years.

Many anthropologists say that people worker harder now and are less happy than at any point in the past (on average) and that our peak happiness happened about 30,000 years ago when the hunter gatherer only had to spend about half as much time working to survive as we do today.

Which I find easy to believe. Just surviving is a lot simpler than this god awful complexity of a civilization we have built.I would be happy to spend the rest of my life hunting and fishing and picking berries and tanning hides, etc.

But to get to that, you have to get through the die off.

 

[Sourdough]

I would be happy to spend the rest of my life hunting and fishing and picking berries and tanning hides, etc.

Rural ALASKA calls onto thee.

 

[Aerindel]

Rural ALASKA calls onto thee.

Yeah, the mistake I made when I lived in Alaska was that I lived just a few miles outside of Fairbanks and worked in town at a steel yard. I should have gone further out into the bush.

 

[Hardcalibres]

That would be the Gray Man concept, which I agree is sound advice. Blend in with everybody else. You can plan for the confrontation, but you don't have to act until someone tries to get into your house.

Agreed.

The gray man approach is applicable to some situations and at specific stages of those situations.

At other times and /or in other situations, it may be better to be the invisible/camo man (completely unseen) or the scary man (when deterrence makes the most sense to discourage threats).

The idea that we prepared people will loose weight (even though we will have enough food) to blend in during a crisis always seems a bit questionable to me. Many people out there can't loose weight to save their lives now. Avoiding any contact with others or perhaps hiding the fact you are not losing weight during those times seems like a better plan to me.

I am not fat now, but the increased physical labor during a crisis would probably just make me grow more muscle.

For those with insufficient physical separation from other people to hide, that is another reason to work towards that separation.

 

[Sourdough]

Yeah, the mistake I made when I lived in Alaska was that I lived just a few miles outside of Fairbanks and worked in town at a steel yard. I should have gone further out into the bush.

Alaska is likely one of the few places, if one chooses location wisely, they have "Free" abundant food and pure water, with very-very-very little physical work.

 

[Aerindel]

At other times and /or in other situations, it may be better to be the invisible/camo man (completely unseen) or the scary man (when deterrence makes the most sense to discourage threats).

This also represents the changing 'aspect' that you would see of my home defense system. From a mile away, you just see a perfectly anonymous dirt road, no different than a hundred others in this area. My house is completely invisible.

You encounter my perimeter a couple hundred yards out where you encounter signage letting you know you are approaching private property. This is to give innocent travelers a chance to turn back before they get into trouble.

If you get within a hundred yards, you are definitely in scary man territory and looking at a fort with barb wire, sandbags and guard towers, a place designed to look dangerous.

 

[Aerindel]

Alaska is likely one of the few places, if one chooses location wisely, they have "Free" abundant food and pure water, with very-very-very little physical work.

From what I've seen, most places in the world would be easy to live in, provided the population density is low enough. Alaska is one of the few places remaining where that is the case.

Heck, even just outside of fairbanks I would often come home from work and find three thousand pounds of meet standing in my driveway giving me the evil eye.

There where days I just sat in my truck and waited a while before trying to get out and go inside. Those where the days between when I drove up there, and when I flew home for the first time and was able to return with some of my guns.