Whenever we think about natural disasters, the subject of looting is not far behind. Looting does indeed occur in the wake of disasters, but the truth is, that it is not nearly as widespread as we are lead to believe.
That being said, in the event of a total failure of the grid, economic collapse, large-scale civil unrest, or nationwide national disasters, the prospect of no help on the horizon will drive a lot of people to take to looting as a way to get the supplies they need to survive.
What follows is a list I have compiled of the places where I believe you will see looters strike when SHTF.
Hardware Stores And Big Box Stores
If the lights go out permanently, everyone will be looking for a generator to power their fridge and freezers. A store that sells generators of any size will be a target for looters.
Related: If You Have A Generator, Do This Immediately
Big box stores will also see their fair share of looting because they are one-stop shops for many consumer goods and food products, making them tempting targets.
Hardware stores will also be targets not only for the generators but for supplies and equipment that would be useful in securing homes.
Grocery Stores
If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it is that so many people do not have sufficient stores of staple food products such as rice and flour but also other products like toilet paper.
The pandemic caused supply chain disruptions that were made worse through panic buying.
In the event of an SHTF situation, where the supply chain is permanently cut off, the same people who were panic buying will have to resort to looting the local grocery store to feed their families.
Organized gangs of thugs will inevitably also target these stores to re-sell their ill-gotten gains on the black market.
Hospitals/ Clinics/ Doctors Offices/ Veterinary Clinics/ Pharmacies
Ask yourself what you would do if disaster struck and you or a family member needed medication to survive. Would you steal it?
⇒ An Ingenious Way To Stockpile Prescription Medications At Home
Millions of people require prescriptions daily; if the supply chain is cut off, they will have to find these drugs through other means. One of these may be to loot the required medicines.
Another group you will see looting these locations are those addicted to drugs and in desperate need of their next fix.
Also, people with injured family members at home may decide that boosting some medical supplies is better than waiting in a post-SHTF triage center.
Outdoors And Sporting Goods Stores
Most people involved in the survivalist/prepping community have a wide selection of outdoor and camping gear, which would be invaluable in an SHTF scenario.
Those who haven’t prepared will head to the local outdoor store to stock up on the essential equipment.
These stores will also have ammunition and firearms and staff that would hardly risk injury or death defending their employer’s inventory.
Private Homes
It would not take a sizable force of hoodlums to effectively force their way into and loot most private dwellings. This is where operational security (OPSEC) is crucial to keeping your home off the local criminal element’s radar.
⇒ How To Make Your House Invisible To Looters
The problem with a lot of preppers and survivalists is that they often spend far too much time talking about their preparations.
Many of us have heard the phrase ‘I’ll just come to your place.” If too many people know about the extent of your preps, you can expect that some of them will come knocking and won’t take no for an answer.
Convenience Stores
The corner mom-and-pop convenience store may not seem like a prime target for looters, but the inventory they carry on their shelves is invaluable after SHTF.
The real problem with looting these stores is that they are usually the sole income provider for a family and, therefore, will be well defended.
Often, the families running the local convenience store will live directly above or adjacent to it and defend it as they would their own home.
Warehouses Or Distribution Centers
There is an Amazon distribution center a couple of kilometers from my home. Every time I drive by it, I think about what a prime target it would be. Yes, that pun was intended.
Related: How to Avoid Being Targeted by Looters During a Period of Civil Unrest
There are also many warehouses and other distribution centers that are full of useful food and supplies along with security that will be nonexistent in an SHTF scenario.
I for one, fully expect angry mobs to descend on these buildings when the grid fails, and law and order break down.
Gas Stations
Even if the power is out, there will still be ways to extract the fuel from the underground storage tanks at your local gas station.
I would wager good money that if an SHTF situation befalls us, there will be a lot of organized groups of looters looking to control this critical resource.
We have seen it time and time again that in the leadup to hurricanes, the exodus of people sucks the tanks dry at all the gas stations in the area, but if the lights suddenly went out, it would be a different story. There would be thousands of gallons of fuel waiting for someone with a bit of ingenuity to extract it.
Gun Stores
There is a saying that I heard a long time ago that goes, ‘One gun can get you more.’ While it may seem suicidal to loot a gun store, the reality is that the staff in these stores do not stand a chance against a mob of already armed looters. People will want to defend themselves, and raiding the local gun shop will be one way they will go about it.
During localized disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tornados, etc. there will always be some looting. Usually, this kind of looting will be conducted by the criminal element who are primarily driven by profiting from the disaster.
When the disaster is on a national or global scale, and help is not coming, we can expect the looting to be widespread and involve people who would, under normal circumstances, be law-abiding good people.
Knowing where these looters may strike gives you the ability to avoid these hotspots and stay safe during a disaster.
I don’t condone looting but I can understand desperate people doing desperate things. A mob robbing a gun store is just for power. That I s scarry.
True. But, gun stores and sporting goods stores, the small one, as least, that I know go on lockdown.
I don’t expect to be raided, but some gossips have it we’re wealthy. Then poverty struck. Then wealthy LOL. But, plenty of surprises i store if it happens, most natural, nonviolent like thorn brush under and some over gardens beds (which suppround the house). Mouser the rattler has chased off more than a few. Plenty of honey bees all over. They like me, so it’s not a problem. Same with yellowjacket wasps. Lots of cactus planted around outside and inside the fence. Honey mesquite acts like weeping willows with complimentary buzz saw thorns. Stay healthy! We need you! niio
I love the idea of allowing nature to be a guardian!! good info!
If it will tolerate your climate, try Barberry, it is a beautiful little reddish bush that has thorns that are coated with sap, so after the initial stick, the wound will ache for hours, if not days. They are also good for planting under your daughters windows…
And for the areas you can’t water easily… nothing like a colourful bouganvillia to really deter people. Good in arid climates, I’ve had one 5m tall up a radio tower, and another 8m wide across a fence. Grow from cuttings, come in a lovely range of colours, and nasty as hell to prune let alone climb through.
As they say, the best deterrent is to be less attractive than your neighbours.
Desperate people will get shot. At that point they are no different than criminals.
basically anyplace that has stuff and is not well guarded. I like the advice on other of your posts that say don’t store all your stuff in one place and hide it.
Scary to think about. I have always tried to think ahead but this is the ultimate forward thinking. I am starting to prep up. Guns ammo, food and water. Also good info on survival without prescription meds. Herbs and holistic stuff. Pretty fascinating .
Opsec is definitely your best option for protecting your area from thieves. Work with your neighbors and teach what you know now before SHTF enters your area. Move to rural areas now and learn the skills needed to survive in that localtion. Don’t hesitant!
But, please remember, unless you have kin in the area, don’t expect a lot from neighbors. While folks are friendly, even welcoming, stranger still equals enemy. Every move you make is talked about, examined, dissected by professional gossips. Always, make friends with the elder folks. They’re usually the the leaders of local things. Be a hand but not a patsy! When I moved home to Arizona, I picked an out of the village. Right off gossips thought I was wealthy, then learned differently. I help if someone asks, give what I can and am respected as both elder and knowledgeable. Being an old fart, and American Indian, helps because most here are, or mixed-bloods like metis and mestizo or gvnakii (Indians with some black ancestry). I’m in good with local churches, as well, which is a big plus, and support local charities and such. niio
Here in the big city, the neighbors are not all that friendly, and our local communities are not as harmonious as they use to be just a few short years ago. It is hard to trust people on a good day, let alone a bad one as there are now so many third world country ethnic backgrounds entrenched here who don’t even speak English and if we could communicate, would find that our values are so very different. They all come with their own agenda. One has to carefully chose who to trust, when to trust them, and in what situation to do so.
Atleat 6 month supply of food and basic m
Ed and hygene. And alway o2. This just the lowest one needs along with weapons.
a large store of tobacco is basic. Planting a wivian (tobacco rurale, semi-wild) in odd corners of the garden are good, too. tobacco is a heler, not a killer. Most people understand that we’re lied to by liberals because hitler, not science, claimed it causes cancer. This is not for smoking, but medicinal, as seen when they opened the grave of a shamen in Alaska that was about 10,000 years old. He had a small pouch of tobacco seeds. He had to have traded for it because the closest wild tobacco is hundreds of miles south. niio
And we had documentation for 10,000 years ago
residential home invasions/looting/rioting could start on Day One – any homes on the travel route from the ghetto part of town to the retail section are in that Red Zone >>> and – the target could be different than what you think – with scored booze & drugs and loaded down with pilfered widescreens and the latest Keds >>> the return trip could be another WROL opportunity to score – don’t discount throwing a few abducted party companions on the top of the pile also …..
In the event of trouble, most-likely-to stores will lockdown. Ammo dealers at farm markets won’t go, but horde till people they know ask. The wife of a cousin back east does that now. They put a root cellar in an old mine on the property, then went deeper and put in rock to look like a landslide (keeps people from exploring deeper). In a small side shaft, steel-reinforced concrete walls with vapor barrier, same ceiling and floor, and a good door that took her sons and husband to all carry down. A dehumidifier runs all the time, and light is provided by a solar array on the house. She inherited her father’s sporting goods store and sells a lot of things. Ammo is double-ordered and half goes into the vault till they have enough. AK-47s are still a popular trade item, full-auto. We’re American Indian. We knew decades ago, generations ago what was coming. Liberals do not like us commoners owning guns because they can’t do as the wealthy do in 3rd world nations, raid, kill, and rape at will. niio
Lol sure full auto aks….
During a looting situation, I would look for the nearest bookstore to wait it out. I never heard of a bookstore being loored.
unless you live in a college town and there’s a surviving Used Books row of stores – you’ll have to be satisfied with a real estate or insurance office …..
If I were going raiding it would be in a library. Too much stuff that I have not learned how to do …
Or fathers day cards or work boots
Definition of mass confusion:
Father’s Day in the Ghetto!
‘Whose yer daddy?’ is frequently heard!
This year was really confusing in Texas…Juneteenth and Father’s Day were on the same day…lol
sooo…everywhere?
Typical ask a prepper article…. water is wet
So where won’t they hit? Hrm….
What creative locations can you hit up for food? Meds? Camping gear?
Scout halls? Outdoor Ed centres? Boat sheds? (We are talking about joining the looters right, not walking in with cash and buying?!)
Nursing homes, disabled care homes, the old people in your neighbourhood… they probably have good meds, and food. (We’re still talking about stooping as low as looting yeah?)
School and recreation centre canteens, restaurants, and sports clubs probably have booze and food.
That’s why I prep. So I don’t have to loot with the crazies.
“re-sell their ill-gotten gains on the black market”. The whole money thing in a SHTF scenario is kinda…odd to me, I mean I understand the whole “I’m rich !! aspect once the civility is restored back to the country, but there’s no way to know when that’s gonna be. And I understand allot of very smart folks invested their money into stocks, real estate etc. during the great depression (those few who had a bit of extra money). So ok you sold your pills, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, some food & a little water….That’s great…now what ? Sit back on your pile of cash you made ?, hoping that civility will once again be restored ?, but uh-oh…we’re going on month number 2 now, you’re getting kinda hungry, & a little thirsty, you try to go buy bread and water from someone with some of your ill-gotten money, Ol’ man Jones meets you at the front door with loaded shotgun pointed in your direction, laughs in your face hysterically, “WTH am I supposed to do with this money ?? I can’t eat it, can’t drink it, can’t wear it to keep me warm, it’s as useless as nipples on a man, Go on GET”!! he says”. Even someone who is sitting on a two or three year supply of flour, yeast…(& whatever else you need to make a loaf of bread), they are going to be very reluctant to sell their ingredients simply out of fear, fear of not knowing when this chaos will end. The only way money makes sense to me in this SHTF scenario is as I mentioned, buying land, stocks etc. but none of that is gonna fill your belly up right now. Oh and hopefully people don’t find out about your little stockpile of ca$h, Rut Roh
What’s a good way to extract gas out of the underground storage tanks????
eaziest way is to power up the pump(s) thru the station’s circuit box with a large genny – next comes a specially constructed 12V pump unit pulling thru the fill taps – lastly is a manual method like a column stack pump or dropping a cylinder bucket down the fill hole …..
Ken, you can use a hand pump to extract liquids like fuel from underground tanks, make sure you don’t create any sparks, especially from static electricity.
maybe a 12v external fuel pump that you can drop in the tank.
Long garden hose, a check valve, and strong lungs.
Couple of things: Someone who was in Serbia during the breakdown there back in 1992-1995 said the first residential homes hit were those behind locked gates. The thugs believe that if you lived behind a gate you had more money than the average schmuck.
He said the number one thing everyone missed when it all came down was — WATER. Everything else is immaterial. You can go awhile without food, but not without water.
The second thing he said was how brutal it was. The gangs were already organized. Every female he heard of was raped. Every one. From 90 year olds to 2 year olds. Some of it was to establish power and demoralize the enemy, some was just because. Women are not safe on their own. Don’t think your gun will help. When 30 raging males descend on your property, you’re toast. People were piling furniture up in front of windows and doors because they were coming in every entrance. Homes were set on fire, gardens were raided and then destroyed, wells were tapped and then poisoned.
We all live in a fantasy world of what we would do, acting like it will be same as usual except no food. Wrong. I watched in Hawaii after 9-11 when the food stopped being shipped in. Hawaii went 11 days with no planes or ships. No mail or UPS/FedEx. ELEVEN DAYS only. Tourists stopped coming for awhile, so the economy crashed and burned. Grocery stores empty by Day 4. It took 6 months for it all to get sorted out.
People weren’t brutal in Hawaii, but you could see it starting to go downhill. If it had lasted more than 2 weeks, who knows. People are really scary when they are filled with fear and unknowing.
Plan for the absolute worst of human nature and worst of shortages and problems. Don’t forget to factor in WEATHER. That’s another variable people forget. What if you’re in the desert and all the power goes out? Can you live in 115º with no AC, no fans, no refrigeration? What if you’re up north? Can you live in subzero temps with no heat, no shelter?
Americans are soft. We are all entitled, no matter our age or race. It has been 8 decades since there was really a major shortage. Few alive today remember any of that. So many people are so concerned about their dang pronouns and “rights” that they forget to learn how to take care of basic necessities. Hint: When the SHTF no one cares what your pronouns are…
So, seriously, have a long discussion with family and your trusted tribe about every single potential bad outcome. Plan for that. Pray for the best outcome. Live somewhere in the middle.
I’m probably preaching to the choir, but I want y’all to be OK.
excellent perspective, and probably a lot more accurate than all these “X-spurts” proclaim.
Right. Very few Americans have been in a war zone. I haven’t been to any that were active.
We went to Sierra Leone in 2008, a couple years after the civil war, but before the ebolavirus outbreak. It was clear that the RUF had taken that place back nearly to the stone age, shooting transformers and substations and any infrastructure there, as well as brutalizing lots of innocent people.
I’ve talked to immigrants in the trucking field from all over, people shot while trying to escape West Africa & Romania… several who left Cuba under threat of death… people who lived through war or destabilization in Nicaragua and Venezuela and Armenia and Somalia and what was Yugoslavia… people who risked their lives to get here to the USA. These people often appreciate being here more than natural-born citizens do, and they make us better by being here.
Sometimes it takes a while to break the ice with people like that, often hated by fools for the color of their skin or the fact that they’re from somewhere else, broken English, whatever. They have MUCH to teach us about survival under great difficulties, if we will only listen.
Been to one and it was interesting how live still went on
I wouldn’t be looting for food but if I WAS I would head to the local school. You can hit the cafeteria, then the nurses office. Not many people think about that other than maybe the people who WORK there. But, let’s face it. Most in an SHTF situation won’t think straight for a while. Their brains go into stand-by stupid and after they calm down and actually ACCEPT the situation, THEN they think about it. By then, the smart people have beat them to it.
I have one store in town I’d like to go to and that the quilting store for fabrics and notions. The lumber yard/store is right next door and that would be a place I’d like to ‘hit’ as well for building materials and fasteners/nails, pipe glue, etc. The population of the whole town is less than 3K so while they are busy elsewhere not really thinking of the future any farther than their belly… well. You know what I’m talking about…
Now, understand this. If SHTF is SUDDEN, you have 4 hours of normalcy to get what you need and get out of dodge. Be calm and don’t give it away or you’ll start a panic then time’s up.
Backwoods,
Mentioning the fabric store points out a valid need. There is a museum in Estonia that commemorates the soviet occupation. They have a rack of poorly made clothing on display. When clothing began to wear out under the soviet occupation and there was none to purchase, people who had never sewn before had to figure it out.
The only prep I made for Y2K was to buy 2 500rd bricks of Winchester Wildcat 22LR. Since then, K-mart quit selling guns/ammo, and went belly up altogether in my neck of the woods.
My plan back then was jokingly stated as listening for the generators of other people who had stuff.
I’m greatly ashamed of how I was, but I am sure that there will be many like I was. Since then I believe I’ve become a better human: gotten saved, married, raised a kid, grown-up, moved along in my career. I am not perfect, but I strive to be good.
I think safety in TSHTF times will be in places isolated or hidden on purpose from the crowds and the mobs, places where it looks like no people or no resources are there, places with an inhospitable or foreboding look to them. Fortresses and fenced areas send a strong message that there is stuff, valuable stuff behind those barriers. Food, weapons, medical supplies, etcetera…. and implied wealth like that is up for whoever can defend it or take it away.
It’s political truth in Texas that the cities are Blue and rural areas Red. Texas has a lot of big urban areas so it doesn’t figure we would be so solidly Red, but get out in the countryside within a hundred miles of any city and the number of people living along all the paved and unpaved county roads is amazing. Multi million dollar estates, 4-2 subdivisions, old cabins from the 50s, double and single wide trailers, real common to see a single wide trailer with a yard full of junk next door to a mansion. It is MEGA MAGA country, Don’t Tread On Me, Come And Take It, LET’S GO BRANDON, the black AR15, the Stars and Bars. After SHTF and the cities are thoroughly looted the refugees and gangs spreading into the countryside are going to be shocked by the firepower they run into.
Murder millions controls nation.
We know that you don’t realize it but no one is interested in
anything that you say or think.
If the Monkey Pox blisters are making you cranky get ahold of
Raven Piece of Shit or Megatron 2024. They have the meds.
Hurry though because if the sores get in your brain you’ll endure
a lifetime of being an ignoramus and saying dumb shit.
Chucky you seem like a odd duck … perhaps you ran out of those blue pills.
Chuck, too late, the “Charlie Foxtrot” X-spurt is a lost cause, there’s no hope for the fool because he prefers to remain an ignorant egotistical hypocrite.
I agree with the list given as the probable first risks for looting. But those businesses would also be the first on the list for Preppers to loot. Even though preppers may have months or even years of supplies they would wish for more. So a prepper mentality would put those places first. Now a less dramatic mentality proabbly would not think of looting immediately and by the time they do it would be too late
Now that we’re going to have 150,000 IRS agent everything will be just fine.?
Interesting it’s almost ten percent of the active duty military….. wonder why they bought all that ammo
One place that is not on the list so if you need to (or want to) go to your local schools. They have food in the cafeteria and general meds in the nurse’s office along with cleaning supplies, writing materials, books, etc.
Oops. Didn’t realize I’d already commented on this article. LOL.