A couple of weeks ago we put the cat among the pigeons by asking if bugging out was always the best idea. Sometimes it is – but a lot of the time you have a better chance of surviving the S hitting the fan if you stay right where you are. That’s why we think a bug-in plan is also a key element of your preparations. If you can stay right where you are you avoid the effort and danger of a move through a collapsing society, and you keep access to all the resources and tools that your home contains.
Of course, your home and its contents are only an asset if you can protect them and stay supplied with water, fuel and power. It’s not just a case of going on with life as normal; you need a bug-in plan, and a big element of that plan is going to be defending your home.
We all think about how to protect our homes, but usually we’re worried about preventing theft or home invasions – crimes committed by criminals working on their own or in small groups. In a SHTF scenario the threat could be a whole lot bigger. If you’re the only one in the area with stocks of food, medications and fuel, you could easily become a target for a determined band of raiders who want your supplies. The precautions that will stop a teenager stealing your TV aren’t going to keep out a couple of dozen armed men.
Prepper sites contain plenty of ideas for securing your home against an attack by looters. Some of them are great; others, if we’re honest, are dangerously bad. The truth is we’re accustomed to think in certain ways about how to defend a house, and it can be hard to adjust your thinking to face a whole new threat.
Who Knows Better?
There are plenty of people in the USA who’ve been professionally trained to deal with the threat of an armed attack on a house, though – soldiers and veterans. Since WW2, fighting in urban areas has played a huge part in warfare and it still does today. Every infantry soldier in the US Army and Marine Corps is trained in MOUT – Military Operations in Urban Terrain. The British call the same thing FIBUA, for Fighting In Built Up Areas (although the soldiers call it FISH – Fighting In Someone’s House).
Military training can bring a lot to prepping, and it’s particularly useful when it comes to bugging in. For most people working out how to defend their home is a pretty steep learning curve; for someone with MOUT training it’s second nature. With that in mind, let’s look at how a veteran’s bug-in plan might be different from yours.
Seeing Without Being Seen
A common saying in the modern military is “If you can see it, you can kill it”. That’s an over-simplification, but it’s pretty much true that if you know where something is, and can throw enough men and firepower at it, you can destroy it. Veterans know all about the importance of not being seen, so they put a lot of effort into camouflage and concealment. It’s hard to hide a house, but any sign of preparations is going to be pretty much invisible.
If you plan to stay in place you need to know what’s happening in the area around your house and be ready to deter attackers as far away as possible. The last article on bugging in mentioned outposts as a way to control the area around your home. That’s one option veterans are likely to use, but there are others. They’ll plan for regular patrols on approach routes, where they can. Of course in an SHTF scenario they probably won’t have enough manpower to patrol they way they’d like, so alarm devices will be used too. These can be sophisticated ones that set off an alarm or light in the house (probably beside the radio, which a veteran will always keep manned), or simple tripwire-operated noisemakers. They both have their advantages. A passive infrared sensor connected to a light on an alarm panel will let you know about intruders without alerting them, so you can be waiting for them when they arrive; a 12-gauge blank exploding close to them might scare them off.
Alarms and patrols are there to tell the veteran that intruders are approaching and the direction they’re coming from. There will be defensive positions set up to cover every approach route, set up so that each position can protect its neighbors. Any dead ground that can’t be fired on from at least one position will have obstacles in it, probably a low wire entanglement. This is a nasty little garden of stakes, pounded in to random heights with between six and 18 inches sticking up. A cat’s cradle of wire is laced between the stakes, not quite tight enough that you can stand on the strands; nobody is getting through that in a hurry.
Dig To Defend
Soldiers hate digging, but they do a lot of it. When a veteran starts preparing his home for defense the first thing he reaches for will probably be a shovel. Bunkers are fine for checkpoints, but for fighting from, soldiers instinctively prefer a hole in the ground. A foxhole is harder to spot and, if you duck down inside it, proof against any bullet. Even if the attackers have a .50BMG that can punch though a log bunker, it’s not going to get you underground. A wooden roof 18 inches above ground level, with a couple of layers of sandbags and some camouflage on top, will turn a simple hole into an almost impregnable fighting position.
Outposts and fighting positions might be linked to the house with sound-powered field telephones. Veterans love these things; they’re cheap, simple, don’t need batteries if the wires aren’t too long, and can’t be jammed. Again, the phone in the house will probably be beside the radio.
What if the attackers push close enough that the fighting positions have to be abandoned? Like anyone else, veterans will make their last stand in the house – and they know how to do that. The fall-back positions will be in windows, on the ground floor if possible to minimize dead ground. They’ll be reinforced with sandbags, the glass removed and the openings covered with chicken wire to keep out grenades or Molotov cocktails. Mouseholes knocked in walls will allow quick movement between positions.
I’ve mentioned that radio a couple of times now. Veterans already tend to stay in touch with fellow vets. In a crisis they’ll work hard to maintain those links, and radio is a method they’re familiar with. Even if manpower is limited, a priority will be having someone at the radio round the clock, to stay updated on what’s happening and ask for or offer help. Obviously, a permanently manned radio desk also makes a handy control point for defense and general admin.
In most other ways a veteran’s bug-in plan is going to be the same as any other prepper’s – military training doesn’t tend to include much in the way of self-sufficiency, agriculture or animal husbandry – but the real difference will be in their ability to protect what they have. If you know any veterans, especially infantry soldiers, it’s worth asking them to share their knowledge with you. Attackers who can bring in enough men and firepower will always be able to defeat you, but by using the tricks a veteran knows you can radically change what “enough” means.
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None of this is really useable for those who live in the city and suburbs. I live in the suburbs and I don’t have the ability for any of this, and since I’m renting, any damage to the house and property I will have to pay for when society bounces back. I can’t go around digging foxholes, breaking windows and replacing them with chicken wire (which is still on fire directly outside the window, mind you).
Echo chamber.
If you think so that is fine not all can survive! You need to figure out if you want to live or die. Simple really if this scenario happens your liability on the property goes away with society and you will either live or Die. If SHTF you need to have a survival mindset if not you will go the way of the Dodo bird. I suggest you study up on what happens to people who are not ready when it happens. Look at Syria, Rwanda, Venezuela and others! You have to get your mind set to survive or you become Prey! It will truly be up to you.
Jen you are absolutely correct. Defending a suburban home on a typical SoCal lot is almost impossible against all but a very small (3 or 4) extremely dumb group. Unless you are going to level your neighbors’ houses, you have very limited fields of fire. The walls of your typical tract house only hold out the weather. Anyone with a decent hammer can break through the wall of any tract home. Bullets from even the lowly .22 will penetrate with ease. If you have real stone siding on your house that may deflect small caliber handgun shots, but any rifle round from anything other than a .22 long rifle will penetrate.
Certainly sandbags can be used to create firing points but any place that is not sandbagged is vulnerable. Are you going to belly crawl all over your house from firing point to firing point?
Wire mesh over the windows? Why not a sign that says “Rob Here”? When do you apply it now or after the SHTF? I submit you are going to be too busy to apply wire mesh over all of your windows after the SHTF, remember you are also placing punji sticks and spiderweb wiring to discourage infiltration.
Or are you going to put all that in before the SHTF? If you live in a recently built tract, the HOA might have a few caustic comments about the punji sticks in your flower garden.
Motion sensing lights fall prey to any kind of missile from a thrown rock to a bb gun.
Not saying that bugging in isn’t a good idea, just want to point out that the above suggestions are not as fool proof as the author would have you think.
Best advice? Have a Marine rifle squad living in your home when the SHTF. That’s about as practical as the article’s suggestions and certainly will give you the manpower to put your defensive measures in place.
“Are you going to belly crawl all over your house from firing point to firing point?”
If the house is being attacked, yes you are. The rest of the time it doesn’t matter.
No suggestion is foolproof. But if you’re at home after the SHTF, and your home comes under attack, you have a better chance of beating it off if you have protected positions to fight from, screens to keep molotov cocktails out, and obstacles to keep the bad guys at a distance. As you said, modern construction is a long way from bulletproof. If you DON’T do some work on defenses, where are you going to shelter when bullets start coming in?
Left coast chuck: since you have such insight (you tried to shoot down every idea the writer had) pray tell what would you do? Other than sarcasm, you offered nothing! If I read you correctly, you will just wave a white flag, tell the bad guys to “come on in, take everything I’ve got, I won’t fight back.” A real sheeple!
I love hearing from you people that think you are the ultimate warrior and everyone else will die.I’m thinking you know-it-all people will be the 1st to go.
That’s a good point, Jen; not every home can be defended, so bugging in – staying in place after the SHTF – isn’t for everyone. If you live in the city you’re going to have to bug out to survive a serious crisis. This article is for people who CAN stay in place.
Okay, you wanted my thought, here they are:
Throughout history, both in Europe and in Asia. with rare exceptions such as where the countryside was stripped bare beforehand or where the siege just dragged on longer than the attackers wanted it to and abandoned the siege, every castle that was ever sieged fell.
These were stonewall fortresses built specifically to withstand assault. They were defended by well-armed for the time, trained fighting men and yet every castle besieged fell.
So, if you think your modern McMansion is going to withstand a determined assault with you and wifey and kiddies defending, it you are living in a dreamland.
Sure, you might be able to dissuade four or maybe even six disorganized gang-bangers, but when MS13 comes calling with 50 or 60 armed gang bangers, unless you have organized your neighborhood and set your defenses out away from the homes, channeled attackers into fields of fire, you are doomed.
When El Chiques decide to pillage your neighborhood if you haven’t organized armed, determined, organized resistance, you are doomed. Sure, you may make it extremely expensive for them to prevail, but unless you have a group organized to meet them, you are doomed.
Even in our own country, when a group of Indians attacked a settler and his family, invariably the settler wound up scalped and his wife ravaged and the kiddies either kidnapped or killed. This was even when the settler had firearms and the Indians bows and arrows.
History is against you. The only survivors of sieges were those who had a hidden escape route so they could slip out undetected.
Claude, I don’t know how your house is laid out, but just for drill imagine that you have sandbagged positions near the front of your house and if you have side windows, near those windows and if the back of your house has doors and windows, imagine sandbagged shooting positions at each of those locations. I don’t know if you have adult children, but assume that your children are at home and are old enough to handle firearms in defense of your home. Now, have your wife belly crawl back and forth between those fighting positions because she or someone else is going to be moving ammunition from one position to another or render aid during the firefight. How long can she belly crawl between those positions? Twenty minutes; an hour; two hours?
Is your weapon up to 30 well aimed shots a minute? Are you up to 30 well aimed shots a minute? That was the standard for a Marine rifleman armed with an M-1 Grand back when I was lugging an M-1. It probably hasn’t changed that much even with the M-4. That is pretty rapid sustained fire.
How much time do you really think you are going to have to string chicken wire from the peak of your roof out far enough so that if the molatov cocktail does land on your roof it will roll down and fall far enough out from the house so as not to set afire? How much time do you think you will have to dig multiple fighting holes in your yard and set out punji sticks too? How many sand bags do you think you will need to build shooting positions inside your house? Remember, in order to stop rifle fire sandbags need to be three deep. You are going to need them to extend down the sides too so that enfilading fire doesn’t reach you. How many such firing positions do you need to adequately defend your house from all vulnerable sides? If you don’t have the manpower, are you really going to be able to belly crawl from the front of your house to the back to defend against attackers and back again?
And all this in a suburban tract development with lots that are at best 100′ x 100′.
If one is lucky enough to have a bug out cabin on a large lot set back a considerable distance from the traveled road, the advice in this column might be well heeded, but I suspect that most of the readers, the ones who do not post don’t have access to such luxury. They live in an apartment or a condo or what we used to call row houses or four plexes. At best they live in a 2000 square foot house on a 10,000 square foot lot with 10 foot side yards and the rest in patio, shrubs and trees. The only way they are going to be able to defend that “castle” is if they manage to get the neighbors all organized and working in concert to defend as many houses as possible in the neighborhood.
A more apropos article would be how to organize, arm, train and motivate your neighbors to resist an armed assault on your neighborhood. How to assess weak spots in your neighborhood. How to defend those weak spots. Where are the strong points in your neighborhood. Where to position shooters to defend weak spots. How to arrange fallback positions so that in falling back the defenders are least exposed to gunfire.
That can all be done ahead of time without digging holes in the front yard and stringing barbed wire in the back yard.
As for preparing to defend, I have been saving can tops and bottoms from every can I open. They are extremely sharp. In SoCal most homes are enclosed with six foot wooden fences. Those can tops are going to be cut into points and nailed to the tops of the fence surrounding my property when the SHTF. Not sticking up high so they are easily visible, just high enough to inflict a nasty cut on your hand as you attempt to vault the fence. I have prepared two-foot long, sharpened on both ends, half inch to three quarter sticks that can easily be pressed into the ground extend out three to four feet from the fence so that as one drops down from clambering over the fence one lands on the punji sticks. All I have to do is place them. Being sharpened on both ends makes it easy to just stick them in the ground. I have a metal roof and its pitch is such that it is almost an A-frame, so anything other than a square brick thrown on the roof rolls down and falls on concrete . Not perfect but done accidentally by the builder and by me when I had concrete poured instead of planting grass when I moved in.
So, Sheepdog, there is my answer to both of your postings. And, Claude, I suggest that you really give some serious consideration to how you are really going to defend your house against a determined attacker.
If the author of this article really has urban warfare experience, he should be able to tell you that no building is invulnerable. It may be costly to take, but it can be taken. History has demonstrated that over and over again over the centuries. Oh, and I don’t need to be reminded about Stalingrad. That was a poorly organized invasion destined to failure from the beginning. Unfortunately for him, Hitler did not learn from history and so was condemned to repeat its mistakes.
Talk about delusional. Get real, the people doing the scalping were the white folks, not the “Indians”. I suggest you start with real history. Hint: the ones almost exterminated were the one who were here first not the ones you paint as the victims. Any person stupid enough to live anywhere close the M13, deserves what they get. Those babies will run out of gasoline before they get a thousand miles from where I am. Hint, they can not produce gasoline and if it gets that bad the electric pumps in 99.9% of gas stations with be pumping nothing without electricity. Maybe in some backwoods, where people eating maniacal hicks live, they may find gasoline pumps that work with a hand pump. But I’m betting on the maniacal hicks to eat them all. LOL Have you written a book on how to fight the zombies hordes lately? Left coast, some time you get it right, other times you surprise me. Oh, please nothing that can happen now hasn’t happened before and the evil empire rarely wins at the end. There is evidence that nothing is new, you can find out by looking at the layers of the planet. People just think we were the first with advance technology able to destroy the planet.
What an idiot. Go to any gas station and look. There will be a place that each tank gets filled with gas. Siphon the gas out. Try not to show your stupidity
So basically you are going to tuck your tail between your legs and run off to the great outdoors. I’m sure you will find lots of cover there in the woods bumping into all the other idiots that ran down the road to the woods at the 1st sign of trouble. Good luck with that. I will fortify my home, stay with people I already know and trust. You sound like you are one of those stupid people that think they are Rambo, Chuck Norris and Daniel Boone all wrapped into one. I’ll go with a group of people I trust and protect my home instead of putting 3 lousy days of food in a backpack and hoping I find more.
Booger, I got the the end of the article and thought,” that’s it?”. Should have more info. It does give you some tools to research. Might be a good idea to get a manual or book concerning this subject.
everybody talks about storing food, medicine, ammo, etc, but water is far more important, harder to store in large quantities (1 to 5K gallons) and a much greater needed resource.
( a family of four “preppers”, will probably need from 1 to 2.000 gallons of water a month, without a garden. This is for all their water use needs, including hygiene, cooking, cleaning, spillage, leaks, etc.)
More people will be after your stored water, more than your food or other supplies. 2 days to a week after the taps run dry, the non preppers will be hunting for water as well as all the “preppers” that did not store enough water and are now learning how fast it gets used up.
Most people “bugging in” will run out of water long before they run out of food and other supplies.
In many situations that will require “bugging out” to find a continuous supply of water and leaving your stockpile of supplies behind.
So why not just plan to bug out in the first place?
Better planning and needs assessment skills will get you through SHTF, Poor planning will not!
How about a pool in backyard and filter system. We are old and frail.
I think a pool is a great idea, I have a 150 gallon animal trough behind my house hooked up to the rain spout. Just keep some bleach on hand and some type of filter system. I am also older and live in the woods, I think it is better to keep people away from your house in the first place. Block the road, chainsaws and trees will stop just about anyone. most people are not going to leave there car or truck and walk down a road to get to your house, they will go for easier targets.
12 ga blanks, and a few live ones Chicken wire on windows, sandbags, Got lotsa sand and bags. Makes sense.
Lock and Hold…
(lock the doors etc and hold position)
Much better terminology. than “bug in”..
We are not hiding under rocks.
People, you have to be kidding yourselves about staying in place, go to your local home improvement center, buy a 2 x 4, small piece of plywood and a small piece of sheetrock, make a small frame, attach the plywood on one side and the sheetrock on the other, take to a range and shoot at it with a .22 caliber, let me know what happens, and you want to stay in your home, LMAO !!!
There’s a lot more to post-SHTF survival than defending yourself, and staying home offers a lot of advantages. The question is if your home can be defended, and that’s what this article is focused on. Fergus was a professional soldier for a long time and he knows how to defend a house; that’s why you’ll see he mentions building sandbagged positions in windows and planning to fight from foxholes outside it. Sure, a .22 will go through light ply and sheetrock construction, but a .308 battle rifle will go through brick walls. Soldiers are used to the idea that walls aren’t bulletproof, and they plan for that.
Most people you would have to defend your home against in a shtf scenario aren’t armed soldiers. They are desperate neighbors, local gangs or bullies. Without water or food, 95% of your neighbors will be dead in 2 months. You can’t band together with people who are not alive. You will have to fend for yourself.
The local saw sharpening shop has lots of saw blades in their scrap bin that are too worn to be worth sharpening. We thought it might be a good idea, inasmuch as they were giving them away, to get some for dinger targets at the local gun club. The only rounds that didn’t penetrate them completely were .22 long rifle rounds. Everything else went through them like a hot knife through butter, even lead .39 special rounds went through them. This was at 100 yards, so that gives you an idea what will happen when some bad guys start peppering your house with 9 mm. Your best bet is if they are so lacking in skill they can’t even hit your house, but I would rather not trust to that much luck.
Wolverine??? Laugh your ass off you go right ahead and bug out to the woods and hide behind a tree. That will be much better. You can be out there with the millions of others that swear they will head down the road at the 1st sight of trouble. Good luck with that and enjoy your acorns and tree bark.
Holding in place in a downtown area is practically impossible. We live just outside a relatively small town – 25-30k, the largest city and county seat of a rural county. 75% of downtown are older homes turned into rentals; lots of “entitlement” government income people. Small time drugs & thieving already plague that area. We currently live on the edge of the small “suburbia” on a 1 acre lot with nicer mixed sized homes. We have virtually no crime here, but I still wouldn’t “bug-in” here. Too easy for the city rats to reach us, 3-4 miles away. We bought 42 acres of 99.5% wooded land another 6 miles further out, surrounded by heavily wooded state land, where most of the neighbors are patriots that regularly target practice & burn wood for heat. We plan to build a log home in the center of it all, 1/4 mile off the road; nearly done clearing a winding driveway that you will not be able to see into. Trees & brush at roadside, you can’t see into the land. There we will “bug in”.
I like your plan, I also live out in the woods and have a long driveway, My plan is to drop trees over my driveway so that no vehicles can enter, most people will not leave there vehicles and walk to someones house to cause trouble. There are to many easier targets. Also get a pair of dogs, They will also let you know when someone is coming, and dogs work even without electric. Ha ha
Wooden structures burn. Forest set afire upwind, goodbye house and all supplies. As in SoCal.
Better to build new structures using moveable forms for thick soil-cement material without rebar. Or by using 12″ hollow blocks in _two_ courses, each separated by circa 24″ to 30″ empty space. Outside block course filled with poured concrete or soil-cement.
Latter design creates passageways, which may contain hidden stockpiles, also allows concealing wiring and piping – yet such more accessible than in a 2×4 framed structure.
Roofs must be either flat ceramic with parapets (SW USA and West Asian styles), or steep metal. Latter better in places which get heavy snows and/or rains.
No conventional windows; only horizontal narrow ones difficult/impossible to climb in. Planting roses and other thorny-decorative vegetation below windows also useful.
How can I tell most of the people commenting here about bugging out are delusional and pretending to be experts? They say nonsense. Yep, things are terrible, society is collapsing and their idea of survival is bugging out to go find themselves some abandoned shack in the middle of a forest (or in the middle of a desert) with what they can carry in their pockets and back pack (gasoline anywhere?). Really? I’m staying put, I do NOT have an 18 wheeler to carry my stuff in and I hear they waste a lot of gasoline. I live in a street, where most men are retired military or police or both, in a rural town in the middle of nowhere. There is National Guard base not too far, and most regulars there either live in town or have family in town. Hint: Their motivation to overrun the town and enslave us all, is rather low. Now if I lived in New York City or even worse in San Francisco, it wouldn’t matter because I would have to be insane. Lay low, don’t tell anyone anything, dress like you shop on a thrift store, act slightly nutty, for YEARS, and when the SHTF DO NOT, again do not, eat those 5,000 calories a day you think you need, and do starve yourself a bit so your weight does down more each week, so they think you are just some poor nutcase not worth robbing. You have a better chance that by running out of gasoline in the middle of a bumper to bumper situation that goes on for at least 100 miles to your forest of choice. Oh, and before I forget, when your neighbors drive by, wave at them and smile. They will add you to their list of friends under “that crazy old lady trying to save the bees that waves.” In other words, have them like you even if you hate people. (Not that I hate everyone.) Of course do all you can to secure your place, people tend to go for the easy targets. Hint: just because you name yourself after some rather vicious animal, doesn’t make you an expert and LMAO makes you sound like some Twitter “tough” muffin. To that I’m referring to anyone in particular, sure. To sum up, if you are NOT in a safe place now, you are fooling yourself into believing you will magically make it happen when things go to the point of no return and stop pretending you are more than a end of the world book reader. .
I won’t bother with chicken wire. At best, it wikk deflect the Molotov and make it land in your yard. Unless you can extinguish it, you will still burn to death. Plus personally, I would throw them at your roof. Far harder to douse the planes and attics usually have easily burnable things, like dry wood, clothes, boxes etc.
I recommend actually talking to people who plan on eventually needing to raid others for supplies. It gives you a glimpse into their reasoning and methodology. Like they say, know your enemies. You already reveal alot more than you realize on here. Why not turn it around on the attackers?
“At best, it wikk deflect the Molotov and make it land in your yard.”
Yes. That’s exactly what you want it to do. It will land in your yard and maybe burst there, but it won’t start an instant blaze inside your house.
“personally, I would throw them at your roof.”
Try doing that from a prone position, which you better be in if people inside a fortified house are shooting at you.
If it lands close enough and starts burning, trying extinguishing it while under fire from several people. Not too east.
You assume a lot. If I’m going after a house and I expect a lot of resistance, unless what you have I desperately need, I will start by smoking you out with that fire. When you come out to douse the flames, that’s when the shooting starts.
You need a reason for them to focus on something other than yourself. Starting off by firebombing their roof gives them a forced incentive to extinguish it fast. If you don’t, you will burn to death, suffocate on smoke or deal with severe structural damage. If you do focus on it first, you will be fire upon.
It’s hardly fool proof, but I think it would be effective. I could be wrong, but hey, no plans perfect. You need to be able to understand your enemies to be able to compensate your plans.
Not every crook will come at you like mad Max villains or goons from book of Eli. Some enjoy making personalized tactics to fit a situation. Those are the ones you need to plan for the most. The ones happy with firebombing your home as well as sending people in ahead of time to sabotage defenses.
How can you truly trust your prepping partners, when they could be planning to sabotage you to their actual friends?
Too funny! Sure. LOL This keep getting more humorous by the day. Well, I guess you could make a low tech catapult and carry it around with you in your back pack. Then you can attack a person’s castle by firebombing it, while hoping there is not a sharp shooter inside. Maybe it’s just my house, but the most recent roofing material used is fireproof. Too many people learning from the end of the world book experience. LOL I must getting too old, growing up, we thought in terms of reality. The most I read here, the safer I feel.
Two things.
1. It isn’t hard to make one. They have plans of it online for God’s sake. That’s how they went to war in old times, so don’t discount it just because it’s old. Isn’t that what many here promote? That old technology can be useful after shtf?
2. A sharpshooter is more than someone with a rifle. It’s a trained person. The vast majority of people in the USA don’t know how to sharpshoot or snipe. The best bet people can wager on, is hunting ability. That can help but it’s still not sharpshooting.
I’ll leave you on a final note. What is easier and more feasible to stop? A roving band of raiders looking to rob you and kill you, or someone who plans in various ways to efficiently kill you? I vote the latter. It’s far easier to drop hemlock into someone’s well or water supply, than to get into a dangerous fire fight.
Bug in or bug out? Now that’s the question. Just have to take your surroundings into consideration. I live in a rural area but not too far from subdivisions about a ten minute walk. Chances are we would bug out because we just don’t have support from family or friends close by. So looters might come around pretty quick. Bug out location is about fifty minute drive and very defensible but will take people to guard the only road in or out at two ends. It will take time to get supplies to location so that definitely poses problems. As already pointed out not everything is full proof.first things first, make sure my family is all together and safe then go from there. I totally agree with Army’s thinking, you have to have a survivors mentality.
Claude Davis, depending on your location, and time frame whether to go or not will make the difference, I you have the forewarning to go, then bail out before it’s too late, otherwise if you are caught off guard, then it will be a stay and fight situation which could be real bad. I have to locations, one of which we are at on a regular basis, the other is about 20 minutes away from there, that is our bug out location, one road in and we hold the high ground with a good water source and plenty of wild game and farms all around.
Lol, Loved the comments about new construction walls. Beautiful 3000 ft² homes with vinyl siding on the outside and dry wall on the inside and 3/8 inch Styrofoam for Insulation.
And the heavy door and a nice security system.
Lol, just take a sharp cane knife to the wall just past the wiring near the door lights.
The photo for this article looks like a bug out location, I would like to add that having a few dogs are a great warning system and dogs work without electric. Also if you live out in the country then drop some trees over the road to stop anyone from getting near your house, do the same with your driveway.
Left coast chuck: since you have such insight (you tried to shoot down every idea the writer had) pray tell what would you do? Other than sarcasm, you offered nothing! If I read you correctly, you will just wave a white flag, tell the bad guys to “come on in, take everything I’ve got, I won’t fight back.” A real sheeple!
Are two identical posts really helping any?
Back again. It is quite obvious that people have some convoluted ideas of history. If you really want to know what we are in for, try studying real history, not relying on movies or books by “expert survivalist” writing fantasy books. Civilizations come and go all the time. We are just part of the evolution of nations and people in this planet. The tough don’t always win and the “meek” don’t get eaten by the cannibals. If you decide that you just love living in a large city or really close to one, you are in trouble. The farther away you are, the safer. As I keep mentioning, gasoline is the key, because most people today are not used to hiking even 20 mile to rob and pillage and then what? You can bet that a very small group will have access to gasoline and solar power, and all kinds of goodies, but most will be laying low in their underground mansions. That does not include gangs of predators. Hyperbole doesn’t make you seem smarter.
Disappear, strive to be the person whose picture is on the back of the surviving milk cartons. They cant attack what they don’t know. Instead of what I you can’t do, focus on what you can do. Can’t never could do nothing. I don’t argue with them anymore. They will end up flowing with the other displaced masses to be the terrible locusts.
All of this is academic for the most part. Most people are not able to pack up and run across town, never mind a “safe” distance out of town as in 100+ miles.
Yes, water is the MOST important thing. NO water = death inside a week even in cool weather. Banding together is maybe the NEXT most important thing. Who will help you when sick or injured? The lone wolf may avoid detection longer and make it. However, as stated, a dedicated group of trained people has a better chance overall. Two references for you…. See if you can find Survival Blog by James Wesley Rawles or any of his novels which are “how to” books thinly disguised as fiction that is entertaining too. Another book with no BS in it is “A Failure of Civility”. It is 400 pages of precisely how to do all the things hinted at here. Spend the money and save your time! We may not have as much of it as we think.
Lastly, are you “saved” in the spiritual sense?
Be sure since that indeed lasts more than a lifetime.
BTW, on the history of castles, quite a few fell due to internal betrayals, not reductions.
At times whomever was in charge just sold out, other times some lower-level person opened a back gate for promises of gold and safety. Believing such promises a very risky proposition, and unlikely fulfilled.
Mongols would fulfill promises if a fortress or city opened its gates immediately on demand. Top elites of a castle or city still likely killed, but ordinary folk left to do their regular business – and pay taxes.