Posted on 08/05/2011 6:43:44 PM PDT by Noumenon
I think you would be better off at your pal’s place than trying to strike out overland to the West. I think ground travel will be a worse and more dangerous option than any but the worst city situations.
I think you would be better off at your pal’s place than trying to strike out overland to the West. I think ground travel will be a worse and more dangerous option than any but the worst city situations.
To counter the counter with my own counter. Katrina was an example but only of a small segment of society. Most people with resources and motivation had already left before the storm. The areas further east from New Orleans were harder hit and very successfully fended for themselves.
IMO the areas east of the Mississippi river simply have too much population to survive the mad max scenario. There are very few places which are more than one tank of gas away from a major population center. Sure some people will stay in the city until they lack resources to go anywhere else, and some will run out of gas half-way. There are so many people that if a small percentage reaches out 200 miles it will still overwhelm a small homestead or even a small town. All they need to keep going is a full tank of gas and a few more bullets, which they take from the small homestead.
The other poster who said he was preparing as best he could and trusting God for the rest has it right IMO. The best place to be depends on what happens. Remote homesteads in Idaho could be targets by other survivalists. They could also be targeted by the Govt when hoarders are outlawed. Or they could be the perfect place to be. You just don’t know until TSHTF and can see which way its flying.
I think trip wires, flares etc are all great. A few more ideas off the top of my head:
Instead of making the easy route appear too hard for them, make the easy route appear even easier. What you don’t want is an obviously impregnable driveway, so that the enemy could hop the fence and come in from 360* that you cannot guard effectively. So make the ingress appear easy. OTOH, the driveway might appear “too easy,” (suggesting an ambush ahead) so also think of the 2nd and 3rd and 4th easiest infil routes. That’s where you set your dead falls, steel bear traps, pungi pits etc. With shotgun and flare warning devices, etc. Of course, somebody with their leg in a bear trap will do a lot of screaming, so the audible alarm is redundant! Bear traps are pretty cheap, require no electricity etc. Buy them now: they are much more effective than home-made “survival” type snares etc. that you will have to make once the stores are all closed.
There are some fast-growing thorn bushes that are almost as good as triple-rolled concertina, but appear totally natural. You can even take cuttings of thorny “pest plants” that nobody will miss. The thorn hedges can be arranged to channel infiltrators into your kill zones. They won’t know they’re in a kill zone, until they are.
You can even erect a razor-wire fence, and THEN plant the thorny hedge over it. The razor wire won’t even be visible. (A visible security fence can mean, “something valuable over there!” So hide it inside of natural-appearing thorny hedges.) Natural-appearing thorny hedges can be grown in Y-shaped channels, to guide the bad guys right into your traps or ambush zones. Since they appear to be natural growth, nobody will suspect they are being guided into your killing ground.
Old tech can be very effective. Pressure pads under the driveways hooked to a silent alarm are undetectable and can run on just a little solar juice. Anybody driving a vehicle up will announce his coming in advance. You probably already have something for a vehicle alarm. It’s just a question of matching it to solar power. Ditto motion-detectors, but they have a much higher false alarm rate. You don’t want one that will go off for every deer, stray dog and waving tree branch, or you will soon learn to ignore it. A pressure pad will only go off for one thing: a vehicle.
There are tons of more ideas like these, but these came right to my mind.
After six months on near starvation diets, fat old white guys won’t be fat.
They’ll be lean, mean fighting and THINKING machines. (If they are alive.)
My point is: a fat guy can get thin and fit, but a dummy will still be a dummy. No matter how buff he was on Day One.
“My point is: a fat guy can get thin and fit, but a dummy will still be a dummy. No matter how buff he was on Day One.”
I’ll take that.
“My point is: a fat guy can get thin and fit, but a dummy will still be a dummy. No matter how buff he was on Day One.”
I’ll take that.
The evolutionary purpose of fat is to provide a buffer through the lean times. We may get back to that! In fact, in some circumstances, a chubby person might outlive the one that goes into the hungry times already thin.
Until hard manual labor is required and the fat guy sweats himself to death.
You must not be married.
Okay....I get it...I effed up....this happens...again, there should have been quotation marks around the “fat old white guys”...HEEEEEELLLLLLLP!!!!!!!
“...Behold our tummies and despair......”
Man, I don’t even want to BEGIN to think about that imagery...!!!!!! Hahaha!!!
Maybe I should have said “Caucasian Buddhas of Rather Portly Stature Dressed in Environmentally-friendly, blending Fabrics”
I’m feeling like this person right now!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYiv76qRCkA
You’re feeling like a cute blonde?
ahh, crap...This is going from bad to worse... Hahah!!
It’s sad that you feel unfortunate to be married.
This thread has only served to remind me how thankful I am to be married. I see my husband as a helpmate. Not just when it comes to TEOTWAWKI, but also for every waking moment. If I wasn’t married to a Christian man, I don’t know that I would have a good reason to get up in the morning.
Ok. I do a lot of genealogy. I’ve spent a good deal of time researching family during the revolution. I found one ‘old white guy’ who probably wasn’t exactly skinny. He was a 62 yr old German farmer who also owned a bakery in town (in 1776). He was one of about 12 kids, mostly boys. He was the only one who lived to be older than 70. When the revolution broke out he joined a militia with one of his grown sons and spent most of the revolution in the mountains of north carolina. You don’t really have to try hard to imagine the privation from his viewpoint. Not only from a culinary perspective. Sleeping outdoors, hiking it over hill and dale. All of his brothers died at or before 70. He lived to be 94. NINETY FOUR. I have to believe it’s because he got active and spent the next 6 years on a ‘health camp’ regimen.
YMMV.
My husband calls blackberry brambles ‘redneck concertina wire’. Raspberries and possibly dewberries would work too. As long as they had thorns and were suited to whatever climate you particularly have. Check the local extension office. Disease resistance is a big plus. If TSHTF you don’t want to run out of spray one year and have a giant dead wad of stuff in the yard.
Added bonus, brambles are idea hidey places for snakes. Like the castles of old had moats with alligators, redneck castles can have thorny brambles with snakes! So, don’t put them close to where your kids play.
Oh, and if you order something from a nursery (or even if you don’t), once a year for several weeks you can put on your anti-snake-clothes and pick gallons and gallons of fresh fruit. Yummy. Delicious AND devious.
Thanks after all, for letting us know the plans of suburbanites, should we see the TEOTWAWKI. Botulism happens in improper canning for food preservation, and such treats will be waiting for criminal invaders.
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