SHTF
Plan

They will take
everything if you don’t stop them.

At first glance
a statement like this brings up thoughts of the government coming
for all freedom seeking people. In actuality this is about your
neighbors and those in your community that will ruthlessly mob up
and literally storm your own home for what you have after a long
drawn out disaster, perhaps sooner. It is a fact that most people
in the United States, upwards of 99%, have little or NOTHING put
away for emergenices. When chaos hits and a country’s infrastructure
crumbles into powder, so does the nation’s ability to feed and sustain
its citizens.

Self reliance
and preparing for a rainy day or even for a full blown hurricane
has become almost a taboo for many, and a total waste of time, money
and effort for the others. While what a person does with their own
money and time is their business, the same holds true for the person
that sacrifices much to prepare for future mass disorder and total
lack of purchasable necessities.

The main conundrum
with the vast majority of the population is that they have come
to totally expect everything provided for them by someone else,
human or machine. This “serve me, as I am the only one that matters”
attitude is more than an epidemic in the United States and many
other countries. As individuals of ALL ages lose the basic skills
of self reliance, and more importantly the desire to do any task
for themselves, a ticking time bomb becomes more pronounced for
when these services breakdown.

Various scenarios
await the preparedness minded person in the event of a societal
collapse.

The majority
of the country has become totally reliant on daily shipments of
food and other necessities. An oil emergency in the Middle-East,
for example, can severely limit transportation of the goods that
people depend on. A war that would rage on a half a world away would
mean that supermarket shelves would be emptied. This would ONLY
be regarded as a moderate hit to civilization until a regional war
like this actually went global. Most people can only get by without
a few days of food before “snap” reactions begin. Remember ONLY
1 to perhaps 1 and 1/2% of the people have stocked up for just such
an emergency.

One of the
most critical threats to be faced will be from those in your immediate
vicinity – and those who have prepared will likely be forced
to draw a line in the sand.

Most of us
live around neighbors and are not, for the most part, living an
isolated lifestyle. We usually have fair to good relationships with
those that live around us. This often leads to the misconception
that these neighbors and those that live around our community would
never just come and take what we have saved up to keep our family
alive after a calamity. In some cases this is true. In most cases
it is not. After a week of starvation and lack of access to food,
most neighbors will gather together and head for any house merely
“suspected” of having food. Unless those desperate individuals are
stopped, they will ransack a home of everything that is in it like
a hoarde of hungry locusts. It is called the irrational conduct
of a mob mentality. An excellent example of this is how a person
can be trampled to death by a herd of wild eyed shoppers desperate
enough to get some electronic gadget at some super holiday sale.

Let’s look
at a fictional prepper family named the Smiths that have 1 year
worth of food for 8 people, along with food for their golden retriever
and cocker spaniel dogs, their tabby cat, and their macaw bird.
The Smiths are friendly people but have not told anyone about
their stockpile. After a severe incident, call it an ecomonic
collapse, war, Earth changes – it really doesn’t matter
– the chain links of food being delivered are now gone.
Through casual conversations somehow a couple of neighbors have
figured out the Smiths have food and have alerted others through
the gossip channel. After almost 2 weeks without much food, no
FEMA government trucks have come in to rescue, a crowd of almost
100 people have gathered around the Smith house. Similar size
crowds have also collected around other people’s homes suspected
of “hoarding” food. The Smiths have taken an unrealistic and idealist
sentiment towards believing in the good nature of human beings
and their community and have not stocked up much at all in self
defense.

Grandpa Smith
understands that trying to feed 100 people would dwindle their
supplies quickly and decides to leave everything closed up and
not answer the door. The Smiths find out how hunger will drive
a civilized person into wanton rage and animalistic acts. Four
members of the mob pick up a railroad tie and use it as a battering
ram to knock down the front door. Then like a pack of sharks in
a feeding frenzy the mob rushes in and takes everything the Smiths
have including their food, blankets off the beds, the TV sets
and computers, pots and pans, even the refrigerator is hauled
out. Why does this happen? People in an erratic state of mind
will grab everything they can, most riots prove this all too well.
The last items to be picked clean are the family’s pets to the
screaming pleas of their 9 year daughter not to hurt her dogs.
Of course the dogs, the cat, and the bird are killed and cooked
up for their meat. The Smiths are lucky that they too did not
become someone’s meal.

The simple
moral to this story is something most survival orientated people
already know – that you must have self defense or
you will lose what you have when someone decides to take it.
The fact that so few prepare means that food is going to be even
more scarce and totally sought after. The Smiths are hardly fictional
and can be widely expected after a large scale catastrophe. Most
people expect someone to have what they need ALL the time and they
will flock towards that source and attempt to get it.

Fortunately
for the self reliant family, those that live soft lives and allow
everything to be done for them makes for a flabby, both in body
and mind, person. Usually this type of person is a also a coward
and even during irrational hunger spasms will backdown and retreat
in the face of dying or being severely injuried. It is one thing
to rush into a home with a mob like a pack of wolves with little
resistance. It’s a completely different ball game to rush into a
well fortified home watching those ahead of them in line being rapidly
dropped one by one. Even with this said, self defense of you and
your family and your lifeline in what you’ve stored up takes a host
of different dimensions that vary significantly with each situation.
There are some basics that can be vastly expanded on with each individual
case. A term that can be used for this is “CONFRONTATIONAL AWARENESS”.

Here are 10
points to think about if and when you are faced with defending you
and your own:

1. What
type of self defense fits you the best? Some individuals
can make very exotic improvised devices, but everyone that can legally
own a firearm should have at least one, preferably many. The extreme
number of firearms takes up pages, but everyone should have a firearm
that can discharge as many rounds as possible without having to
reload. A firearm that has some long distance range to it. A shotgun,
call it a scatter gun, with at least size 4 buckshot up to triple
ought 000. A handgun of course for close range engagement. The simple
answer to which one is what is most comfortable with you personally
and what you can afford. You want stopping power, but also to be
able to at least slow down a lot of targets if this becomes an issue.
Other weapons should also be added, such as bear pepper spray that
can slow down or stop a large group of people rushing you. Knowing
how to jerry rig various home made weapons adds to your security.
Have extra ammunition for all firearms. Don’t depend on just one
or two weapons for self defense, have back-ups.

2. Litigation.
This is an extremely sticky point “IF” the society recovers. It
should be remembered that (unfortunately) any act of personal self
defense might have to be answered for. The state or country that
you are in may or may not view the 40 people you shot “outside”
your home as a legitimate threat, even if they had a battering ram
and other weapons and total anarachy ruled the day and night. In
other words, just because it may seem like the end of the world
doesn’t mean that it actually is. Protecting you and your family
could also mean carefully assessing your situation and not acting
without discretional thought. You never want to be indicted with
some mass murder charge should the world reestablish itself enough
to prosecute you in the future. Checking out the laws of protecting
yourself where you live before the world falls apart is an excellent
idea and sound precaution.

3. Determine
your boundaries. Where, exactly, does a threat cross that
threshold in which you engage them? For some people it is a property
line or at the front door – wherever this may be, know it. In some
places a mob outside your door constitutes a deadly threat to your
family. In some places you may actually have to be backed into a
corner and the attacker may even have to possess a weapon for you
to legally defend yourself. Know these legal parameters. For some
people it doesn’t matter the legal consequences, and this can be
a life saving measure taken to stop an attack before a group gets
too close that you cannot stop. Establishing a point of no return
is a good strategy so that you know where and when you must act
to protect everyone.

4.
Know the seriousness of what is happening. This is of course
ties into the legal ramifications of defending yourself, but especially
with just how desperate people will become to try and take what
you have. Has the water been turned off? What about the power? Is
there any food left in the stores? Are emergency supplies and other
food being shipped in, and if so how often? Is there in town rioting?
Are the masses of people roaming around looking for food? Have there
already been homes attacked from mobs? The more you know about the
threat evaluation the better you can prepare your defenses.

5. Know
what is around you. This includes having some way of seeing
a full 360 degrees around your home, up and down, and someone on
watch duty most (or all) of the day and night. An ideal security
preventative is to have some sort of observation tower, motion detectors,
night vision, and anything else to give you advance notice of anyone
trying to sneak in unnoticed. Hidden viewpoints throughout the home
are a workable and important addition. Booby trapping your property
has been an effective method used in warfare all through history
as a means of stopping someone and alerting everyone. Dogs and other
animals such as geese are often used as early warning systems. Always
try to know what is going on for as far a distance from your home
as possible.

6. Decide
on your barriers. This brings to mind that raw stopping
power of a projectile fired, launched, or even thrown towards you
and your family. The standard home (mud and sticks) offers little
protection against a bullet travelling at over 3000 feet per second.
Consider how you might shield against radiation, and use the same
strategy for self defense. The more mass the better. Many excellent
materials are out there, but raw materials around the house such
as dirt, sand, rock are certainly better than nothing as a shield.
Taking advantage of underground levels of the home – because
you can’t shoot through dirt – also offers good temperature
control and isulation from the outside elements for people, pets
and your supplies. Barriers also serve the purpose of slowing down
or even stopping advances of individuals trying to come for you
and your stockpile. Like many criminals, simple locks and anything
that takes effort to break through can impede most individuals enough
so they leave you and everyone else alone. The more obstacles you
can place to make it as difficult as possible is in your best interests.
You want to do everything you can to avoid a situation where you’re
left with no other option but hand to hand combat.

7. Be
ready to take a stand. Unfortunately many people feel that
when the time comes that they can do anything it takes to survive.
Yet some will “freeze up” when faced with pulling a trigger and
blowing someone away. This is especially true after someone has
actually shot one of the first of many individuals rushing in to
take what they have and even hurt or kill them and their family.
Hesitation is human nature and throughout our lives society has
implanted into our psyche that killing someone, even in self defense,
is wrong. This is why it is imperative for those in your survival
group who have the responsibility of defending everyone to be willing
to use those weapons if and when it becomes required of them. Training
and practice will make it possible for you to more efficiently and
effectively deploy your weapons on a physical and psychological
level. There is a reason behind why the military trains and trains,
not to just improve accuracy, but to make it mentally routine that
a soldier will not vacillate in a life or death situation. The two
words that best describe this is “mental toughness.” You must be
able to reliably act to save yourself and your family.

8. Be
prepared for unconventional attacks. Desperate people will
do incredibly stupid and irrational acts that defy reason. If a
mob discovers a well fortifed home with food in it, they might try
to actually light the entire structure on fire. It doesn’t matter
to the insane minds that all the food will be ruined inside; they
only see and “think” that this will smoke everyone out. Someone
may even get the “brilliant” idea of trying to collide a large truck
into you home. The list is endless and depending on your unique
circumstances, there are defenses against most if not all attacks.
The aim here is to make the distance an attacker needs to travel
to your home as long as possible and this is where barriers and
booby traps play an important role. It is also passive protection
in which someone can help protect their home with high water type
bushes, plants, and trees that won’t burn easily. In many high danger
wildfire areas homeowners will use fire retardants on their homes,
as well as having quick means of extinguishing fires ready to use
if the time comes. Help ready yourself by reviewing and thinking
about the unconventional ways your refuge can be assaulted.

9. Remember
you have the advantage. Mobs will often try to frighten
and intimidate people out of their home and/or try to force you
to divvy up all what you have. Don’t let them scare you. Those
supplies are your lifeline, without them you will be reduced to
almost the same level of those roaming around aimlessly that have
not prepared. You have the upper hand in that they have to
come for you in your own home – a dwelling that you are familiar
with. All depending on how well fortifed your place is, anyone coming
for what you have will have to get across all sorts of traps and
physical hurdles, not to mention various weapons being discharged
at them. Most attackers are also going to be depleated in body and
mind from not eating, on top of already being out of shape flab
bodies. These individuals usually are totally untrained in any type
of combat or fighting, and that
gives the prepper/survivalist a whopping upper hand. Time
is also on the side of the hunkered down people, as a very hungry
person will lose interest and go somewhere else easier to get at.
They will also likely become too weak to pose any threat after more
time. Long standoffs almost always favor those that have everything
they need well stored up within easy reach and use.

10. Avoidance
of any showdown. Everyone will be better off if neighbors
and others decide not to storm your home for food and supplies.
Concealment that you have anything is crucial. Remember that the
very first “trespasser” that is shot at lets others know that you
have something worth fighting for, use good discreation. Convincing
others that you have nothing and are just as “bad off” as they are
will take some showmanship. Rundown looking property is one way
to discourage many, as well as looking as much like a sick or dilapidated
person as possible. Still one of the best ways to ward off hungry
people is SMELL. Out of the five senses, scent and smell will drive
a starving person rapidly towards a possible food source, or very
rapidly away from something that reeks. Horrid smells tell the brain
to stay far away. Of course not telling anyone about what you have
stored up before a disaster is essential. It is often very encouraging
to “think” those living around you are all aboard with preparation,
but in reality people are likely only telling you what you what
to hear. It only takes one person to betray you and let everyone
know you have a mini-supermarket ready to be picked clean. True
trust in others must be carefully weighed. Remember this before
letting anyone outside your family and survival group know that
you are even interested in prepping, “most people are just TALK,
too much talk, and are not on the side of the prepper (YOU!)”. There
are good reasons why close to 99% of the population freely chooses
not to prepare.

You always
hope that you never have to fight off neighbors that have remained
friendly and courteous towards you for years, but almost no one
has faced what is coming. Insane cicumstances drive many civilized
people into blinded insane savages capable of incomprehensible acts
of desperation. It has to be remembered that by self sacrificing
much, the prepper/survivalist has what they need when civilization
implodes. Those who haven’t prepared have consciously decided to
enjoy themsleves and waste much. In other words, someone that has
taken the money, time, and effort to save for tomorrow makes what
they have stored up, “worth it to defend”. Those that have not prepared
don’t care if you and your family go hungry in less than a week,
if they did they would have stored up supplies themselves. These
individuals are going to expect you to “share” everything you have.
This is why the prepper needs to be more than ready to defend themselves
against those that will “try” to forcefully take your lifeline from
you.

Reprinted
from SHTF Plan.

July
17, 2012

Copyright
© 2012 SHTF
Plan