Most of the time, it makes more sense to bug in, than it does to bug out. There have been many survival writers who have taken this stance, myself included. Bugging out, especially bugging out to the wild, is something that should not be undertaken lightly, due to the difficulty that one will face in trying to stay alive. At home you have everything you own to help you survive; when you bug out, all you’ve got is what you can take with you.
Of course, there are exceptions to this. Owning a safe, prepared retreat, the proverbial “cabin in the woods” that we would all like to have, makes a huge difference. If I owned that and faced a potential survival situation, I would probably be the first to bug out. That would be my primary plan and my main stockpile wouldn’t be at home, but at that retreat, well secured, under several locks and keys.
I don’t know about you; but I don’t have that cabin in the woods. So like most others, my plan is to bug in through whatever disasters come my way. That complicates my plans somewhat, because I have to make sure that I can survive in place, no matter what happens. If I don’t, then the decision to bug in could prove to be a fatal one.
That means discovering potential mistakes in my plans and finding solutions for them; something that’s not always easy to do. Yet I have found several through the years, mostly by reviewing what has happened in other disasters, through an “after action evaluation.” That’s the hard part. Once a problem is discovered, there’s always a solution to it.
The question is, are you making the same mistakes?
Related: My 3 Bug Out Bags (with Pictures)
The Backup Plan
Perhaps the worst thing that any of us can do is to lock ourselves into a survival plan which doesn’t have a backup. A large part of being a prepper is to be prepared for anything, kind of like the Boy Scout motto. Even a plan to bug in has to have a backup plan.
Circumstances may not allow you to bug in, regardless of what you plan. I’m sure there were preppers living in southeast Houston when Hurricane Harvey struck. They had their stockpile, their equipment and their plans… and none of it did them any good. They still had to abandon their homes when the flooding came, just like everyone else. Whatever preparation they had made to bug in, ended up being for naught.
That was even worse for the people of Paradise, California, when the Camp fire burned down all 1,200 buildings in their city. Regardless of how well prepared they were to bug in, they still had to leave; otherwise, they would have died in place.
If we are so locked into our plans that we are unable to break from them, they’re the wrong plans. I have to bug in, because my wife is part of the city’s emergency action team. She can’t bug out. Even so, I have plans in place to bug out, knowing that it will cost her job.
Related: Is A Veteran’s SHTF Bug In Plan Similar To Yours?
Hidden Caches
If we don’t have a realistic backup plan, then chances are real high that we haven’t done any preparations to survive, if we have to leave our homes. I’m not talking about a bug out bag here; everyone has those. I’m referring to equipment and supplies that we can use, once we bug out. All a bug out bag is supposed to do is keep us alive for three days. After that, we need to be able to resupply.
Supply caches can take on many forms and be many sizes, but as the two examples I used above show, there are times when we’re going to need them. Any preppers in Houston, Texas or Paradise, California who didn’t have caches, weren’t really any better off than everyone else. They were dependent on the cash in their pockets and finding an emergency shelter.
Related: Cheapest Foods that You Can Stockpile
Self-rescue
Regardless of the disaster, you should be prepared to perform a self-rescue. Going back to Houston, I wonder how many of the people living in the southeast part of the city, who had to evacuate, had a boat… or even a rubber raft. I saw only one family in a rubber raft, in all the video I watched. Everyone else was being rescued by the boats of the Cajun Navy or other rescue workers.
Thank God for people like the Cajun Navy; but I didn’t become a prepper in order to depend on others to rescue me. Since I lived in a hurricane zone, I realized that I needed to have some sort of boat to rescue myself and my family with; if nothing else, an inflatable life raft. Not to brave the wind and rain of a hurricane, but to brave the flooding that follows.
Each of us have potential natural disasters that we face, depending on where we live. With that being the case, shouldn’t we have a plan for rescuing ourselves from them? Pioneering families would go down in the root cellar to escape tornadoes, can’t we at least do that well?
Related: The Mindset of Freedom: What Every Prepper Can Learn from Atlas Shrugged
Home Safeguard
If you’re planning on bugging in, then you’d better lay a general’s eye to your home. Chances are pretty high that you’re going to come under attack sometime. It may not be during the first week of your survival saga, but it will happen, eventually. In fact, the longer you go, the greater the chance of that attack.
Protecting yourself and your home in the wake of a disaster isn’t the same as protecting it during normal times. You can’t depend on a deadbolt to keep the criminal element out. That’s nothing more than another obstacle to whoever wants to get in and get your stockpile. I guarantee you; they can get through it.
When that attack comes, I think it’s safe to say that it won’t be a lone criminal that comes knocking down your door; it will be a small crowd. I tend to think in terms of 10 to 15 people. They’ll all be armed; they’ll all be hungry; and they’ll all be mad. In those conditions and with as desperate as they’ll be, I seriously doubt that any of them will have any compulsion about shooting you and your family, so that they can get whatever food you have.
Do you honestly think that you can fight effectively against a dozen armed people who are bent on killing you and stealing what you have? I don’t think I’m Rambo… at least not most days. While I have a serious defensive plan in place, a lot of it depends on having my survival team there with me.
Related: My Personal Bug In Plan
Team Player or Lone Wolf
That brings me to the next mistake; that of being a lone wolf. Probably the biggest thing, mitigating against trying to be a lone wolf survivalist, is the need to defend yourself. While you might be able to defend yourself successfully against two or even three attackers, if you’re good enough and lucky enough, I doubt you can do it against a dozen.
Here’s the thing though; unless your team’s survival plans include coming together and surviving in one place, you’re a lone wolf. A team mate who lives across town isn’t going to do you the least bit of good when your home comes under attack. For that matter, if your town is big enough and there’s no fuel for your cars, they’re not going to do you any good for any part of survival.
I’ve seen it over and over again; survival teams that are scattered around town. That’s not a team, unless someone has a place that’s big enough for them all to gather at and live together, it’s a survival club. They might get together and talk about what they’re doing; but they aren’t prepared to survive together.
Related: Are you a Community Member or a Lone Wolf Survivalist?
Poor OPSEC
Finally, most of us have worst OPSEC than we think we do. I know I do. While I try to keep what I’m doing a secret, I have too many friends who have been in my home and who have seen what I’m doing. Granted, I’m showing them my projects, because I’m trying to convince them to become preppers themselves; but there are too many of them whose stated plans are, “I’m just going to come to your house.”
It’s tricky trying to convince others of their need to prepare, without letting them know what you’re doing. But each of those people who know are potential problems when things go bad. At least some of them are going to think that they should be able to impose upon your friendship and get some help from you.
Then there are neighbors. Most of them know your business too, even if you’ve tried to hide it. There are just too many things that we all do, which are visible to those who are looking; and there are always those who will be looking. Every neighborhood has someone who’s nosy and that same person is usually a gossip.
The only solution for these problems, besides bugging out to that cabin in the woods, is to have some sort of plan for dealing with them. I’m not talking about the “No, I won’t help you” policy that most of us say we have. I truly wonder how well that’s going to work when our friends and neighbors start knocking on the door.
My solution to that problem is that I have stockpiled large quantities of extra beans, rice and seed. That way, I’ve got something to feel my friends and neighbors with, without getting into my family’s food stockpile. Those friends won’t be eating as well as we are, but they’ll have something to eat. They’ll also have seeds to plant, so that they can start growing their own food. If they complain, I’ll just point to my own garden, showing them that I wasn’t asking them to do anything that I wasn’t already doing.
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Great advice! Thanks!
I’m goin to reply to this a bit different I’m a class 7 FFL with a SOT LICENSE and I found a shotgun that’s 29″ in long holds 21 rounds of buck and we have two and two extra drums each and as for the body’s I just baught 70 thousand pounds of excavater digger and we been getting ready for this for quit a while and I have three thermals and I went to the local farm grain supply store and got a couple hundred of those plastic fiber bags and I will take out a sky light and put bags on the roof and with those bullpup 12 gage shotguns and a few other guns I can hold of quite a crowd of people after you take out the first 25 or so it takes the fight out of the rest and if you think I not goin and about a half mile down there’s a big tree or two I can push down and with the nabors we have talked to we can hold off a big bunch but you keep your good nabors close and the others move to the south. We have good growing ground and a lot of spring water here and we have a creek that used to run a big saw mill so I think it would run a generator or two quite easy if you look into scopes look at thermal and only becouse they do not need any external lights like Infrared a few years back i baught the bigest thermal you could buy it has a 100 mm germanium lens and it will look as far as two miles so it would be pretty hardcto snick up on one of thim and the other two are mounted on other weapons and i will throw one name out there only becouse it has crossheir adjustments that you do yourself and that is Armasight they make very good scopes even the Arnold with his mud bath can not hide from that. BiggerHammer
Good write up with some good points made. Might want to make a few corrections to make it a little more readable, but still good. Only point I can correct is when you come under attack. My personal plan is to back out and let them in. It’s a trap. I installed a manual sprinkler system in case of fire. Get outside and turn on the water. I also have a tank of agricultural anhydrous ammonia. They ain’t gittin much…
I was thinking in case there’s all these people who show up uninvited to eat all your food (who will be very likely to murder you in your sleep),it’s better to have a stock pot and a plan on how to Serve Man…
What a great article! Having a plan we are invested in almost invites the tunnel vision that can kill us. The viewpoint in your article is a great reminder to look for weaknesses in our scheme instead of breaking our arms patting ourselves on the back.
Did Rod Serling provide the cookbook?
I have a lot of two things- rice and peanut butter. Enough to give some away, but that’s it. I will say “I hope this helps. Try and find some bread to go with it.”.
Good thoughts! Another way to handle relatives, friends or neighbors who maybe have traveled some distance on foot to get to my house, and so want to stay here where the supplies are, is to invite them in. But the deal is; if they stay more than a day, they will be expected to earn their keep/do their fair share. There’s always work to be done like, basic house cleaning, collecting fire wood, normal maintenance on the property, enlarging the garden, food preparation, etc. This way, assuming it’s all done in an atmosphere of fairness, our new house guests would have an incentive to protect the homestead. For example, we would have at least a few more able bodies to pitch in, in an emergency. That might be to help encourage a group of roaming souls to keep moving on down the road. Or establishing a 24-hour watch on the premises
Another advantage of having a number of house guests is that peer pressure could be brought to bear on an individual that did not want to do his share. Probably, he would be encouraged to start doing his share or to move out on his own.
The real dynamics of a situation like this are impossible to predict, but this might be a better option then continuing on as a lone wolf.
I agree with your approach. This is what I would do first, invite them in. Yes it’s a risk but it’s one I’m willing to take. If the distant relatives or roaming band comes peacefully. If not I’m probably going to die so I will take a few with me. That’s what I will do.
Having “guests” can be beneficial but what if they come in the middle of winter and you don’t have enough food for a bunch of people?
Another important thing is for them to know, right off the bat, that it isn’t a democracy within this group. An advisory board may exist but the leader has the final say or they can hit the road.
Scary unless your “friends” are much more dependable or true Christians. I think it invites drama and conflicts and creating suspicion within the group and everything you have becomes theirs! I have four adjacent neighbors that I trust and can bring into a sharing and protection group to care for a dozen kids from 2-40.
@Oldprep: the problem with letting anyone in and then telling them to leave if they won’t do their share of the work: now they have seen all of your preps and your safety measures, how much food/ammo/guns/etc. that you have, how you plan to protect it and what your limitations and holes in your protection are.
Not a great position to find yourself in…they can now find others that don’t want to work (they should have been prepping for themselves and their families anyway) to overrun you because they have ll of the ‘intel’ that they need to do so.
I anticipate others wanting into my bugIN place. I have only two entrances, both heavy steel doors. In addition, I plan to “booby trap” the entrances with black powder bombs buried in the ground around the doors, that can be triggered inside. I have a heavy arsenal to defend with if they get by those traps. A good source of water is a must. My “bunker” is built over a well with a steel casing and hand pump in case of no electricity. I have over 4 KW of solar powered generators for electricity when the power goes out. I have over 3 years of freeze dried food stored up. My kitchen, bathroom facilities, and heating are all enclosed in the “bunker”, underground. I also have stored away a good supply of medical facilities in case of injury or sickness. None of those are mentioned above.
They are not mentioned because that is not what the article is about. Are you happy to share with the whole world what you have? Not a good idea to give a grocery list for all to see. May want to keep that list to your self. Just some helpful advice.
MUST BE NICE TO BE ABLE TO AFFORD ALL THOSE MHINGS THAT YOU MENTIONED. DO YOU LIV IN AREA AWAY FROM ANY TOWN?
I live in a gated neighborhood but fortunately our home is not surrounded by homes front and back but We would be pro-active to defend our area, as a small compound of 7 homes of various military skills and training. More of an extended squad size force. We have an Asian family at our back flank, end of road, that we will include and protect!
Al, you may have steel doors and traps, but have you done serious evaluations for your weak points? If I wanted to get in a building and saw it had steel doors, I will look for easier ways to enter such as windows, ventilation, through a wall or the roof. Is the ventilation system for your bunker protected well? If not, can be used to insert toxins or flammables into your bunker? Or can be damaged enough to stop your internal ventilation? which may lead to suffocation. Please do some research about egress, breaching, guerilla and siege tactics, then reevaluated your strengths and weaknesses.
Make it too hard to get in…and it might be too hard to get out…if you need to.
No one mentions access via the crawlspace…..I need to figure out a way to lock the entry, as I have an oil furnace (not working) that could be an entryway…..
What can u tell us on how to create a better and secure home with whatever kinds of devices? I am asking because we’re 80 yrs young and me, (the wive) also is handicapped. We’re on 5 acres but actually could use tips on how to use simple ways to secure some of the land like a way to announce intruders. We are only 2 of us, no families etc….
Get a dog & train it well. They hear what we can’t. Put up some solar motion lights around the perimeter of your house. Put 3 or 4 inch screws in your door jambs instead of the tiny ones that come with it. Put a slide bolt lock near the top of your door. It helps keep the door stable. Put inside wooden shutters on your down stairs windows. Try to build a ‘safe room’ in your house, even if it’s just a closet or your bathroom. Hope this helps
For one thing – Get and learn how to shoot an AR Platform Rifle. ps You don’t just “shoot” an AR – You “Run” an AR. Learn how. Including Reloads.
I keep one stored 2 steps from my bed. And a couple others. Pistols “at” my bed, And a set of Earmuffs. Ever shot a gun inside a house ? You “WILL” be Deaf for 5-10 min if you shoot inside a house without them. And VERY Painful – How do I know? 🙂
I Use my pistols to “Fight to” – “Get To” my Rifles. I also have shot Combat Competition Multi-gun, monthly for the last 10yr. At my house – I have built-up concrete block shooting positions, strategic at 2 corners of my house – I can cover 360deg from them. And a boatload of 9mm & 556 ammo in basement. Several Pistols and Rifles – All of which I have shot Combat Competition Matches with every month for the last 10yr. Several stores of food, water, etc here and even in my Van I drive daily – I could live just out of IT for 2 wks. Don’t forget to keep earmuffs on hand. An AR will make you deaf – quick. I use Noise-cancelling Muffs – You can hear Voice but cancels out Gun Shot Noise. Wife is Vietnam Nurse Vet – I Told her “I” will do the shooting – “You” just “Patch ME Up” 🙂 (Well – as much as I “Tell Her” Anything) 🙂 I mostly “listen” 🙂
The problem with bugging in, is that if you are in a city, you will face far more threats than you can imagine and far worse.
It will not be 10 to 15 average people coming for your supplies, it will be a street gang with 50 or so members.
All experienced murders and all willing to die for their gang.
You never hear of Police officer’s wanting to bug in. They know something that the average joe does not.
That is, that in the cities the violence is just barely kept in check by the Police. Mostly it is just contained to the ” bad areas”. The News only report about 10% of the violence that goes on.
So think carefully. If there are no police to keep them in check, what will happen.
Just the pyromaniacs that love to watch stuff burn will be running around lighting the countryside on fire and with no fire dept to put them out or police to catch them.. they will have a free hand to burn it all down.
Consider what happened in some of the riots, where their still were fire depts to put out the fires.
..
Then their will be the plagues that will ravage those area, because there is no sanitation and most who stay behind, in the cities, will not have a clue how important that is.
So with these kind of threats, no “security team,”OPSEC or any of that, will protect you.
Not that bugging out will be a picnic either. There will be plenty of threats.
At least you can avoid or control some of them, hide from some of them or just prepare be a nomadic clan.
There are reasons that so many Indian tribes lived that way a well as many other groups.
I don’t think a street gang is going to be much of a threat to a lone or family prepper. Why take the trouble to go after your cache when they have the numbers, firepower and ruthlessness to overwhelm the security at a big grocery store or distribution warehouse? Random criminality will be a problem though, and you make a really good point about firebugs. Leave pretty much anything lying around unguarded and, if it can’t be stolen, soon enough some crazy is going to set fire to it.
You’re both right. Please, do not dismiss gang activity out of hand. The sheer number of gang members in the U.S. means there’s enough to raid all those places you named AND cause mayhem for individual citizens.
Claude, that may be true at the initial onset, but what about several weeks later when the stores and warehouses have been raided and are empty? Then the raiders move outwards looking for more, and that is when it gets even more desperate and vile.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABUT BUGGING IN IF YOU DON’T LIVE INA BIG ITY BUT CLOSE TO SMALL TOWN IN THE MIDWEST?
That is my situation. Small Midwest town, alone ans well stocked.
@ Mic: the problem with bugging out: you have NO protection from the elements, or intruders. You have NO certainty that your “caches” will still be there…there are FEW places that aren’t already populated, and with the hordes of homeless, they may have already found your cache and be living high.
Young families with children or even babies will find it VERY difficult to do.
Older people can’t afford, with their health and physical abilities, to be homeless and try to protect themselves, let alone try to survive the elements, carry what they need food wise and shelterwise. Realistically, bugging out is not a valid plan for anyone. I agree somewhat that city-dwellers may find it a better choice, but it is still a very unsafe alternative to bugging in.
What I can’t take will be boobie trapped and burned up, as I have set certain items to catch fire as soon as I and my family are out and away. We installed a tunnel under the house that opens up in an abandoned building 200 yards away. The windows look broken out but they are made of ballistic glass and painted black on the inside to look like they are broken. The doors are made to look like they are barely hanging up but in reality the hinges we reconfigured to look like that. We have a fully armored vehicle hidden in a dark corner that is also painted Mat Black.
Did Danny and Willie dig the tunnel or did you bury 200 yards of culvert? I’m a big fan of DIY engineering.
I smell bull crap, sarge.
200 yards of digging a tunnel underground is a very big and long project to accomplish. How deep is the tunnel and what type of reinforced walls and ceiling did you put in? It’s a nice ‘story’, but I think I smell a lot of BS.
There are estimates floating around, some from governmental sources indicating that the die-off rate in the first year after a CME/EMP will be 90%. That means if there are ten people living on your street, only one will survive the first year; if there are 100, only ten will make it to the end of the first year. There will be 90 dead bodies on your street.
Other reports indicate that using 18th century farming methods, the arable areas of the U.S, will only support a population of 30 million, I don’t know if that figure is what drives the 90% die-off rate or if the two figures are arrived at separately. If arrived at separately, then it would appear we have evidence of that die-off rate from two independent sources.
My best guess is that the die-off rate in the big cities will be higher than 90% and that the more rural areas will have a much lesser rate of fatalities the first year.
In the past five years I have had two serious infections from insect bites. They were easily handled with antibiotics, but not the usual ones that are recommended for peppers, but the old fashioned sulfanilamide. That was the antibiotic that saved so many U.S. and allied lives during WWII. The field medics would sprinkle “sulfa” powder on wounds to lessen the chances of infection which was the major cause of battle deaths in prior wars. Our WWII era individual first aid kit contained a sulfa-impregnated pad to be applied to wounds.
Without an antibiotic to treat those now-a-days minor infections, they would have become major infections resulting in, at best, loss of my arm. I doubt that poultices would have helped.
Even though I washed the bit and applied antiseptic to it, it still became infected. In an EOTW situation, I might not have even had those relatively common solutions available.
An effort to remove a limb without benefit of skilled medical care, antibiotics, sterile environment and anesthesia I believe would have led to an ugly demise. I would have been a statistic in the 90%.
There is a book entitled, “The Dark Secrets of SHTHF Survival” by Selco Becovic. It talks about survival during the Balkan Wars. It is a grim book. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it. I was left with the impression after reading it that Mr. Becovic was a likely candidate for suicide. He most definitely is suffering from PTSD. I hope I am wrong.
If you read his book, you will get a realistic glimpse into life after an EOTW event. Just existing became a life and death struggle every day, I read some of the comment by some folks about their dietary needs, sanitary needs, entertainment needs and other, what I consider frivolous, ideation. Sometimes I have commented about what they will eat when hungry enough and other time I have just thought it was a useless comment and said nothing.
Read the Becovic book and buy more bullets.
Two corrections: “. . .washed the bite. . .” and “. . .SHTF Survival”
Thanks for the recommendation. Ordered this book. My “Aw, it’ll be okay” mindset needs constant resetting. Fortunately, I’m married to a man of the opposite persuasion.
I agree. The 90% fatality rate will be a combination of things. Starvation, illness from varied types of infections with no way to treat them and violence.
OPSEC is a problem for many preppers, I think. There are a lot of people who just can’t keep stuff to themselves. They seem to feel it’s necessary to brag about it on FB, Twitter or elsewhere. If you are a ‘lone wolf’ don’t share information. If you are part of a group, make sure you can trust everyone in the group with your life as you might have to at some point. If you are worried about food, just remember Hannibal Lecter, “If the food runs out…we’ll still have each other”.
Trusting others in a grid down, post war, SHTF scenario is an interesting topic. Without going into a long discussion just consider whether or not you can truly trust Anyone when in a life or death situation. When your lifelong best friend has to choose between you getting something to eat and his wife and kids eating who do you think he’ll choose? ?
Remember the illustration/ joke, when your boat goes down what do you do about sharks? …. cut your buddies throat and swim like he’ll.
Trust should not be taken lightly.
the people that lived nomadic lives did so because they are usually hunters / gatherers and were traveling so they could continue to harvest available food supplies over vast areas in conjunction with trying to be in areas where the weather was better for them depending on the season, such as head south in the winter, north in the summer, head to the oceans and rivers when those were most productive, head inland when those areas were more productive, and not just following animals, birds, or fish, but also for when various plants would become ready for harvest also, such as gathering berries, acorns, fruits, roots, bark, etc., and also to find / gather salt, flint, obsidian, etc.
Chuck, I believe you are correct, and of those that do survive, I wonder how many will have resorted to cannibalism. I know that where we currently live I will not be able to hunt / gather / grow enough to sustain my family after our supplies run out, and that is when the next phase begins – first, see if we can scavenge enough to keep going without getting killed or enslaved trying, then we Bug out and become hunter / gather / foragers until we reach somewhere suitable where we can try to settle down again and build a cabin, grow a garden.
dz: That is sort of my strategy too. Shelter in place to get an idea what the situation is and then try to move to an area that is more conducive to primitive living than SoCal.
Yes, I know various Indigenous populations lived in SoCal, but it was a real hand-to-mouth, subsistence existence. While at one time SoCal was lush jungle, those days were far in the distant past. In the Current Era (the politically correct term for AD) SoCal was basically what is called semi-desert. Without man-made irrigation and movement of vast quantities of water from distant sources, it will very quickly revert to semi-desert again. Even now many people are removing grass lawns and putting in what is called seri-scape, using plantings of “native” plants and plants imported from South Africa and Australia, both areas with similar climates.
Cannibalism is a touchy subject because among some groups it is totally taboo. Other groups have practiced it without the moral overlay that our western civilization has.
While I am certain that I would not kill a human just to fill the stew pot, I have not absolutely ruled out that someone I was forced to kill because they were an immediate threat to me or my family would not end up in the stew pot. I prefer to think it would be a last resort type of situation, but it is a scenario that I have considered. There is no way of knowing in advance how we will react in any scenario that we have not previously experienced.
As I am certain that I would never kill someone to steal their food, I also am certain that I would never kill someone to have them for dinner. There is no question that if I happened upon a corpse and there was edible food in close proximity thereto, I would not hesitate to scavenge the food. I certainly hope that life would not become so desperate that someone I had to kill to save myself or a loved one would go in the stew pot. Unlike some whom I feel have not seriously considered the topic, I just cannot say with any degree of certainty what course of action I would take in such desperate circumstances.
During my years spent as a court reporter, I met evil people who would have not a single scruple against such a course of action and indeed very well would kill people just for that very purpose. If three criminals would rape, horribly torture and kill a young girl while she is begging them not to kill her, what scruple would prevent such depraved persons from also consuming her flesh? Unfortunately, in today’s world, with our reluctance to rid the world of such utterly depraved animals, there are far too many of them roaming the earth and confined in prisons.
That is a topic I broached several years ago in similar ethics discussions. In an EOTW situation, many more crimes are going to be punished with the death penalty. In days gone by, stealing was punished with death. There is a case from the 19th century in the California Supreme Court Reports about a thief from this county who was convicted of stealing a barrel of flour worth in excess of $200. He was sentenced to be hanged on Wednesday and the sentence was carried out early Saturday morning of the same week. The California Supreme Court (yes, those socialist do-gooders who live in an ivory tower these days) didn’t have a problem with the sentence nor the execution of the sentence. They did comment that it seemed a bit hasty but certainly within the letter of the law and upheld the judgement and sentence.
If you apprehend someone stealing food that your family needs what are you going to do with that individual? You don’t have the resources to put him to work with a guard. You don’t have the resources to have him loiter in confinement. You can’t turn him loose or he will come back and steal some more as he now knows how you have it stored and how to pilfer that storage area. He may even bring additional thieves to help him. The only alternative will be to kill him to prevent recidivism. I suggest that bullets will be scarce and you won’t want to waste a bullet on a criminal, so hanging will once again become the go to punishment for serious crime. You may once again see corpses hanging from various structures at the entrance to villages or homesteads as a warning to folks who might undertake the same kind of depredation.
Claude on occasion has posted ethical questions on this list and a lot of discussion has ensued. Some folks have adopted a moral high ground that I feel is unrealistic. Just within the last two weeks, the author of the main article talked about scavenging and one reader blasted him with what I thought was an unrealistic view of a post apocalyptic survival actions.
I too have been criticized for posting my plans for scavenging in a post apocalyptic scenario. I have pointed out that every state in this country has a plan for use of abandoned property by other than the owner abandoning the same. If the mythical man that the courts refer to would come to a reasonable belief that the property has been permanently abandoned, he may retain it for his own use. The rub comes in what the mythical reasonable man would conclude. That is why we have juries to decide, yes a reasonable man would believe that the property was abandoned or no, a reasonable man would not reach that decision. In an end of the world situation we won’t have the luxury of 12 folk spending time deciding whether the property was abandoned or not. We will have to reach such decisions on our own and hopefully will be guided by ethical standards arrived at over centuries of human life.
On that note, I will sign off for tonight.
On the topic of violent criminals-what do you think would happen with prisons and jails in a grid-down scenario?
MOVE TO MIDWEST. SOIL IS GOOD AND PLENTY OF WILDLIFE TO FORGE. CALIFORNIA WILL BE THE ONE OF THEFIRST STATE TO GO P IN FLAME AND DISEASE.
let me clarify, I am NOT advocating cannibalism, but desperate people do desperate things to survive, including eating the dead such as the Dahmer party that got themselves stuck in the mountains during winter blizzards and the few that survived did so by eating the ones that died. Also with the survivors of a plane crash in the Andes Mountains that turned to cannibalism to survive until finally rescued. My intentions were to get people to think that if you encounter survivors several months after SHTF, they might want to do more than just steal from you, especially those who are desperate enough (or just immoral enough) to do anything, and I mean anything, including cannibalism, to survive.
I think Chuck is right that we will probably need to execute offenders for much “lesser” crimes than we currently would, unless you are willing to risk your family and/or community and let them go free to “offend” again, and again, and again.
It was the Donner party, not the Dahmer party.
Or was that a cleaver pun? As I am typing this, my computer kept switching to dinner party, which also could be a pun.
Peace
MadFab
my computer kept trying changing it to Dahmer so I thought it might be correct, but I wasn’t concerned about the correct spelling, it is the idea that some people will resort to cannibalism if desperate enough that I was trying to get people to think about.
Good article.
My prepper/survival team is my Cul-de-sac neighbors.
6 families living on a small isolated cul-de-sac. Each family brings something different.
One is an electrical engineer and part-time mechanic and ex-Navy.
One is a pastor, small business owner and ex-Air Force.
I’m a small-time farmer and chicken raiser and Ex-Navy
One is a tool guy and tinkerer.
One is a Mechanical Engineer.
One is a Plumber.
We all have small arms training, each of us have preps and have worked together in the past after hurricanes.
2 of us have solar panels.
Each family has a cache of stuff at a rally area of we need to bug out.
All six families have been friends for at least 15 years.
@FLAPrepper1: Wow. What, no WOMEN in your group of 6 families? Interesting.
Always remember: In a mass death scenario, the guy with the backhoe always eats-someone has to bury the bodies so we all don’t get sick.
I thought If there were overwhelming numbers of dead to dispose I would try to burn bodies like has been done so often in history when mass casualties were more than could be buried, and even with heavy equipment like a backhoe, that equipment needs fuel to run, would you waste fuel on mass graves which might still create a health hazard such as contaminating water sources, or would it be better to just create huge pyres and burn them?
as far as the guy with the backhoe always eating, I would not rely on that as part of anyone’s survival plan – that guy is just as likely to get killed as for people to hand over food just because he has a backhoe
DZ” Unless they are disease ridden to begin with, dead bodies are not a source of disease. At least that is what I have read time and again. Typically, we bury the dead to keep them from being scavenged by animals, rats, coyotes, crows, ravens, vultures, feral cats and dogs, possum, raccoons, etc. Some native American tribes did not bury their dead but placed them on platforms to be devoured by some of the creatures I mentioned. If, on the theoretical block of 100 individuals that I mentioned in an earlier post 90 have died the remaining 10 will not have the manpower to either bury or burn the bodies. Burning a body takes a lot of BTUs and ten people gathering enough wood to burn 90 bodies would leave them no time for the other activities necessary to sustain their own lives. I suspect the practicalities of the matter will be that the bodies will be stacked up and the survivors will use them as a bait pile to kill the four legged scavengers that are attracted to the bait pile for their own stew. Life will be brutal, nasty and ugly. It won’t be as refined as life in the 18th century because we won’t have the infrastructure that existed in that century nor will we have the life skills and basic equipment that every home had at that time. Do you have a spinning wheel at home? A loom? An anvil? A dibble? A plow? Do you know how to saddle a horse? Hitch a team to a plow or wagon? Can you cast your own bullets? Knap a flint? Can you start a fire with flint and steel? Can you bank a fireplace? Can you build a chimney so that it will properly draw and not fill your soddy with smoke? Those and many more were all skills that any farmer in the 18th century had and every household had the implements that I mentioned. Unless it is a member of your immediate household or a very close friend, burial or cremation will be a luxury that you just won’t be able to afford. To paraphrase something the hippies used to say, “life will suck and then you will die.” In fact, some of the 90% will be folks who just can’t handle the grim reality of it all and will end it themselves.
LCC, I’m like-minded and enjoy your posts. If a SHTF scenario is confined to the United States or North America, what are the chances we’d have to contend with Russians or Chinese moving in to fill the void?
God’s Child, when tribulation comes I’m sure you will taken… for those like me, I’ll have to try to become one of the Meek and inherit the earth, and then figure out how to survive, as in, Adapt and Overcome.
As to bugging in. I live in a neighborhood that is all connected by sewer pipes. I think when TEOTW comes. There won’t be any sewage plants working. I fear they will start to back up. I have purchased a 4″ cap and plan to crawl under the house. Cut my sewer line coming to the house. Cap it and dig a privy in the backyard. Just saying
I live in a busy suburb. If the sewer system craps out, I’ll have a couple of days at best before I have to evacuate. Same goes for trash pickup. There’s no crawlspace here either! It’s good you have options.
Jean,
You are one of the few who have thought SHTF response all the way through.
Speaking of sewer problems, this is why I’m a fan of septic systems. Of course they don’t work in a city of high rises, but in a rural area with proper drainage, they’re the best. They keep working even in a melt down and use no power, and are just as sanitary as a city sewage system – they do not contaminate the earth, as some do-gooder try to claim. We have ours pumped every 10 years, which is over kill. If in good condition, it will probably last for decades with no maintenance. If one had plenty of food, you could also drop the body of a nasty intruder in it to be digested with all the other sewage. But, I think a better disposal way would be to just lay the him out on the forest floor for the critters to chow down on. Whatever the animals don’t eat, the microbes take care of. I’ve seen deer go that way and it really creates a stink for awhile, so you don’t want them near your house. In summation, if you have a septic system, it’s really nice to know that one major survival issue is taken care of.
OldPrep, your suggestion to just take corpses far away and let nature take care of them is probably the most practical thing to do, depending on how many you have to deal with, if you end up with too many corpses or it’s not practical to move them far enough away for natural decomposition, consider burning them. Another option is you could use them as pig food. For those thinking they will just bury all the dead, then please tell us how you plan to do that, especially if there are hundreds, and if you had to do it with hand tools? For the guy with the “I’ll use my backhoe” ideas, you will be an extremely easy and likely target while operating your backhoe, even if someone just wanted to steal the fuel.
I don’t remember much about flooding in southeast Houston, but living near the confluence of Barker and Addicks Dams in west Houston I’m very familiar.
Here’s the thing. The rain didn’t flood us. Four days after Harvey hit we were still fine. Our street flooded, and homes closer to Buffalo Bayou flooded, but we were dry. That was until the Army Corps of Engineers opened the gates to both dams.
Here’s the thing. I thought about evacuating after Harvey hit (I couldn’t because I was in the hospital the day before it hit), but lots of local areas, especially to the north and west of us had flooded. Freeways were flooded to the west of us, so no driving to San Antonio.
We thought we had dodged a bullet until August 29th, when we woke up to see water levels up a foot over the previous night, despite rain moving off. Those SOBs at the ACoE lied to us about when they were going to open the floodgates. We were trapped.
It will be dog eat dog scenario and the unprepared are only victims! Even if one is armed to the teeth, most will not provide for the unprepared, unless it’s a minor short term natural disaster! Long term family survival can only be achieved by a heavily armed band defending your bug-in group able to kill roving gangs! Once you pass out that first jar of peanut butter you will be inundated with beggars that will get very nasty until you are cleaned out by desperate gangs after all your supplies! In a nuclear scenario only the prepared and armed will survive over a year or more and everyone else will be animals and cannibals! Any others shtf scenario is a cakewalk! If you can’t prep for WWIII, then you are not prepared!
As was said in the article, when bugging in, one must be prepared for any of the high risks that this may present. Storing food and candles are a good start, but all that can be lost if other possible risks are not covered. For example; the article pointed out that a prepper that had planned on bugging in, in Paradise, would have lost it all to the fire in 2018 that took out the whole town if he had not accounted for fires. I’m familiar with Paradise. It was, partly is, a heavily forested community. Anyone living there had to know that living in a forest presented the danger of fires. Problem is; virtually no one was prepared for that threat. Why!
I’ve studied structures lost to forest fires for the last 20 years. What I have learned is that your house does not have to burn. But an amazingly high percentage of people just assume that if a major fire comes through, all is given up to the insurance companies. Many in Paradise did not even have insurance. But that does not have to be. Fires should be (in my opinion) one of the most important things to prepare for. Because in a total, or wide spread collapse, there won’t be any fire services to come to your aid, maybe not even water at your residence. Therefore, when a fire starts there will be no way to keep it from spreading from structure to wildlands to more structures etc.
It’s all too much to cover here, but briefly, statistically, 90% of structure fires start from blowing hot sparks/embers, not by flame contact. And this is partially evident when studying a totally burned down building and seeing the surrounding trees still intact. Their foliage may be brown from the heat of the house fire, but it is still there, which says those trees did not burn, or catch the house on fire. While there are no absolute guarantees when it comes to fires, there is a lot that can be done for zero dollars, like keep your yard and house cleaned up. Keep dead grass away from your wood siding including wood chips in the adjacent flower beds. Clean the tree debris off your roof, out of the rain gutters and from under your decks. Don’t stack fire wood next to your house. Cover your house vents with stapled on aluminum foil (heavy duty would be better) when a fire is approaching. Name of the game is to stop flying sparks from gaining access to flammable materials. If you have these ducks lined up, and are physically and mentally up to it, stay with your house. That way you will be there to put out any small spot fires that start. Virtually all fires start out small. When a fire is approaching, prepare for loss of water by filling your bath tub or anything else with water. Water down everything on the exterior of your house and continue to do so as long as you have water pressure. Search on line for more that can be done. This is a good start. Fire season is approaching again.
I am a 63 yr old widow. I am prepared. My family believes I am crazy. They call me “tin hat” & I tell them I wi up d rather wear a tin hat than a blindfold ! No the less. Should I try to deal with neighbors for a good Community ? I know none of my neighbors , I feel like it’s pretty risky, I am more afraid of being back stabbed. Maybe it’s better to wait till SHTF to see true colors ?????? Advice please
HELLO I AM TRYING TO MUY MANY BOOKS BUT I AM UNABLE TO PUT THEM ALL IN ONE CART AND PAY ONCE. PLEASE ADVISE