Economic Collapse & Security: I Am Your Worst Nightmare

I am the leader of a band of 8-to-12 looters. I have some basic military training. We move from place to place like locusts devouring everything in our path. My group is armed with light weapons and can develop and follow simple plans of attack. We take what we want by force of arms. We prefer none of our victims survive because that could cause problems for us in the future. It has been six months since the grid went down. You and the other five members of your party have settled into what may be a long grinding existence. The every day tasks of growing and gathering have now become routine. The news from the outside is extremely limited but you don’t really miss it much. Life is simple but physically demanding.

Although things may seem stable you will need to keep your team focused and alert. This is your first and most important layer of defense. You should hold an immediate reaction drill once per week. Keep things simple. Practice a specific response to such threats as injury, fire, attack and evacuation. Despite the challenges you must maintain contact with those around you such as neighbors for vital clues that trouble is brewing. Regular monitoring the radio will be critical in providing an early warning of trouble. You may be able to safely interview refugees with risking your party. Keep in mind the information you get from them may not always be reliable.

While you have been farming I have been learning the best tactics to employ to seize your property and your goods. I have been refining them since we hit the road right after the lights went out. I have conducted eight “hits” so far and have been successful seven times. Here are some of my “lessons learned”.

Intelligence gathering and target selection is critical to my success. Targets include those who have large quantities of fuel, food and other valuable supplies. My posse is constantly questioning anyone and everyone we contact searching for this our next victim. Anyone who has ever had knowledge, even second hand, of your preparations is someone of interest to me. I may approach them directly or indirectly. If anyone knows something I will find out about it. Who seems well-fed? Who still has transportation? Who has lights? Who was prepared? Where are they exactly? Somebody talks, either in person or on the radio. They always do.

We search for victims night and day. During the day we are listening for the sounds of machinery, cars, tractors, gunfire or generators. Day or night without a lot of wind those sounds can carry for miles. At night I look for any sort of light. Even a small flash indicates somebody with electricity and that means a rich target. I always have somebody listing to the scanner for any news, leads or insecure chatter. Operational Security (OPSEC) is an important concept for your entire group to understand and maintain. If somebody outside your circle doesn’t have a real need to know about your plans, preparations or procedures then they shouldn’t know period. Develop a cover story and live it like was a bulletproof vest. It is no less important to your protection and survival. During an event you need to blend in with the surrounding environment. Carefully observe noise (such as generators and other engines) and light discipline especially at night. If you need to test fire weapons do it in one sequence to avoid a prolonged noise signature.

Once I find and target you reconnaissance of your retreat is my next step. Only a fool would try to rush in and try to overwhelm a group of “survivalists”. We had a bad experience with that during our second hit. Now we spend at least a day or two trying to size up a large opportunity and the best way to take it down. I will observe retreat activity from a nearby-concealed position. I will get an idea of your numbers, weapons, routines and so much more by careful surreptitious observation. If your group seems alert, I will try and trigger a false alarm with a dog or child to watch your reaction to a threat. That helps me know how you respond, where you are strong and how to attack. I may also obtain a topographical map of the area to identify likely avenues of approach and potential escapes routes you will try to use. I may coerce your neighbors into uncovering a weak spot or access point or other important intelligence. I also have a Bearcat handheld scanner. I will be listening for any insecure chatter from your radios.

Regular patrols at irregular intervals focused on likely observation points and avenues of approach could keep me at bay. You could put down sand or other soft soil in key choke points as a way of “recording” if anyone has recently traveled through the land. Dogs, with their advanced sense of hearing and smell are able to detect and alert you to intruders well in advance of any human. Motion sensing infrared video cameras as a part of a security plan could play a part in your layered defense as long as you have power. A 24 hour manned observation point equipped with high quality optical tools is a must. It should be fortified and if possible concealed. It should have a weapon capable of reaching to the edges of your vision. Seismic intrusion devices, night vision and thermal imaging are phenomenal force multiplying tools. They can give you critical intelligence and warning. You should use them if you have them. Understand they are not fool proof and I can often neutralize them if I know you have them.

These tools and techniques provide you reaction time. Time to plan your response and time to execute that plan. Recognize that a “defender” is always at a disadvantage. By definition a defender will be reacting to my attack. Modern warfare has emphasized the ability of the attacker to operate faster than opponents can react. This can be explained by the OODA loop. Below are the four steps of the classic OODA loop. These are the steps a defender goes through when under attack.

As an attacker I will try and operate at a pace faster than you as a defender can adjust to. I will change my direction, pace, timing and method to force you to continue to process through the OODA loop. This creates confusion and wastes your precious reaction time. As a defender you will need to disrupt or reset your attackers timing with a counter-attack. When you are successful you become the attacker. Your defensive plans should utilize and exploit this concept. Here are a few scenarios:

I will begin the attack when I can engage at least half of your party’s military age personnel in one coordinated effort. I will infiltrate my team into concealed positions around your retreat within 50 to 75 yards. I will target any identified leadership with the first volley. Two thirds of my people will be engaging personnel. The other group will target communications antennas, surveillance cameras and any visible lighting assets. I want your group unable to see, communicate or call for help. The members of my band will each fire two magazines in the initial exchange. Two thirds of my group will change to new concealed positions and wait. One third will fall back into an ambush of the most likely avenue of escape. We will stay concealed and wait until you come out to attend to your wounded and dead. We repeat the attack as necessary until any resistance is crushed.

Ensure you adjust the landscape around your retreat so that I don’t have anyplace offering cover or concealment within 100 yards of your residence. You can create decorative masonry walls that can be used to offer cover for personnel close to your residence. Fighting positions can be built now and used as raised planting beds and then excavated for use in the future. These can be extended or reinforced after any significant event. These structures or other measures such as trenching must be sited carefully to avoid allowing them to be used effectively by an attacker if they are overrun.

For one hit we used an old truck. We forced a refugee to drive it to the retreat gate. We concealed half our group inside the truck. The truck was hardened on the inside with some sandbags around the edges. The other half of our group formed an ambush concealed inside the tree line along the driveway. We killed the driver to make it look good and had one person run away. Those preppers almost waited us out. After nearly three hours they all walked slowly down the driveway. They were bunched up in a group intent on checking out the truck and driver. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

They could have worked together as group to sweep the area 360 degrees around the truck and they would have surely found us. A dog would have also alerted the residents to our presence. They could have taken measures to eliminate the vegetation offering us concealment on the road near the gate. They could have used CS gas or something similar to “deny” any suspicious areas. Lastly they could have done a “reconnaissance by fire”. Shooting into likely hiding spots, including the truck, trying to evoke a response. They should have established an over watch position with the majority of their group. This over watch group would have provided visual security and an immediate response if there were an attack. They were not expecting any additional threats. They didn’t consider that there might be additional danger lurking nearby aside from the truck and they died.

A few weeks ago we surprised and captured a couple of women out tending a garden. It was totally by chance. We were traveling through a very rural area on our way to another town when somebody heard a tractor backfire. We immediately stopped and I sent a small team to recon the noise. They bumped into a small party tending a field at the edge of their retreat. They seized two women and immediately dragged them back to our vehicles. We began negotiations by sending a finger from each one back to the retreat under a white flag. The rest was easy.

This didn’t need to happen. Better noise discipline would have kept us from discovering their retreat. Some simple boundary fencing or tangle foot could have delayed us. The women should have been armed and aware of such a threat. If they has established an over watch for the garden they could have engaged us before we took our hostages or at least alerted the others that there was a problem. They also could have had a quick reaction Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)developed prior to this incident. That Quick Reaction (QR) force could have followed the kidnappers back to our vehicles and set up an ambush of their own. Rural retreat security is a full time job. If you snooze you may lose everything.

I don’t like this option but sometimes the prize is just too tempting. We typically infiltrate quietly at night to prearranged start points. We begin our attack just before dawn when your senses are dulled by a long night watch or from sleep. Based on our reconnaissance we divided your retreat into positions or zones that need specific attention. We prepare for battle by using an air rifle to target any lights or cameras. Our first priority is to engage any site and destroy or degrade them as much as possible. I split my forces into two supporting groups. One group keeps the target position under constant fire. The other group also fires and maneuvers, closing on the target and destroying it with gunfire or improvised weapons. Many times these positions only have one occupant and the task is relatively easy. Often these positions are easy to spot and are too far from each other to provide any effective mutual support. We will work from one position to the next. In the darkness and confusion most of the defenders are disoriented and ineffective. They fall like dominos. We have also used motorcycles to negotiate obstacles and speed through cuts in the perimeter fence. Then throw Molotov Cocktails into any defensive position as they roar past. If you fall back into your residence we will set up a siege. If we can maneuver close enough, perhaps by using a distraction, we will pump concentrated insecticide into your building or we may introduce liquid Propane gas from a portable tank into the house and ignite it with tracer fire.

If there was enough warning time from your OP you could execute a pre-planned response. Your planned response should be simple, easy to understand and execute. Half your group occupies your fighting positions, two to a position. The rest of your party establishes an over watch and concentrate its fire at the enemies trying to fix your positions. If you had more than enough prepared positions the enemy might not know where to attack. It would also provide more flexibility in your defense based on the direction of attack. I would use Night Vision if available or illumination from flares or lights as a last resort. Rats hate light.

Usually people keep main access points blocked from high-speed approach. Likely avenues of approach should also be blocked or choked and kept under observation. Remember though what keeps me out keeps you in. Typically the common techniques of parking vehicles in roadways will only delay my approach not stop it altogether. An ordinary 12-gauge shotgun, shooting slugs, can stop most types of non-military vehicles at close range.

Don’t forget the threat of fire or other non-traditional weapons in your defensive plans.

You could create the illusion of a “dead end” for your main access road by positioning a burned out trailer home or a couple of burned out cars at the false “end” of the road. Concealing the fact that the road actually continues to your residence.

Lastly, develop a plan to evacuate and evade capture. When faced with a significantly superior force it may be the only viable option. This should include simple, reliable communications or signals such as three blasts on a dog whistle. Your fighting positions and barriers need to be constructed to allow coordinated withdrawal in an emergency. You should establish a rally point and time limit to assemble. I believe this should be a priority in your practice drills. During a real emergency you may be able to rally, rearm and plan your own version of the “snipe and siege” to retake your retreat.

Location – Location – Location: High and remote are best OPSEC – Think of it as a form of armor or shield: Practice it and protect it. Observation Post / Listening Post: Your first best chance to counter attack Gates / Fences / other barriers: May slow me down. Might keep you in. Fighting positions: Must provide mutual support and allow for evacuation. Residence: Last line. Don’t become trapped People, Planning and Practice

An aggressive and unexpected counter strike can win the battle. Stay alert for multiple threats or diversionary tactics. Criminals excel at feigning weakness to lower your guard.

My reason for posting this is obvious but should be a reminder survival is always best done as a community. During difficult times there are always things to be done and no one can do everything and still sleep. Everyone can bring something that aids the group. Just a little friendly reminder. - NewAmericaNow

Also, you are correct: some of the responders here fail to understand that the original writer is offering a lesson. They only have to get lucky once. We have to beat them or avoid them every time.

That's flat out WRONG.

What if THEY get unlucky? Then they are down from 8-12 to 7-11 (no pun intended).

After three or four "unlucky" happenings they won't have the manpower to do much at all: and may get desperate and foolish.

Cheers!

There will be people in every generation that can escape socialist education and be taught.

Amongst my five siblings, I did seek something better. I don’t see the world as they do. They are victims of the circumstances that they sought in life.

I let them quietly be. There is no sense in trying to teach them otherwise. They don’t want to pay attention. A few of them are trapped into a victimhood mentality where they want to hate the world. Another one is having too much fun paying for toys and playing with them. Any preparation for the future would not be something that she would enjoy because that would involve actual work.

I just live my life the way that I know best. My children see the world much the way that I do. My hope is that this will give my children a better chance in life. My goal is to prepare them to be responsible, strong, self-reliant and God-fearing young adults.

My niece and nephews will live their lives the way that their parents taught them to live. They will never be prepared for the smallest of emergencies and their parents are ill-suited to help them. All I can do is pray for them.

Was that directed at ME?

I'm gonna go Pict on their ass and take just one of them with me. It adds up.

(Incidentally, in line with the botulism-goodies, how about a dead man's switch or such on your stash, so whoever unauthorized tries to abscond with it after your death, gets hit with six or seven Bouncing Bettys, or the whole thing Molotov cocktails itself?

Cheers!

A thought-provoking article...but it misses the fact that criminals, not matter how well trained they are, think like criminals.

There are two obvious defenses that don't rely upon military tactics and training:

Poverty: crying poor. Look like you're on the edge of subsistence, or even on the edge of starvation. In the inner city, it's the Mercedes that gets jacked. A beaten-up old Ford blends in, and it's not worth the effort of jacking, so it's left alone. Using insecure radio to complain about lack of goods, offering prayers that clearly ask for deliverance from hunger, etc. gives off a clear signal that there's nothing worth stealing in your place. In this sense, felt privation (regardless of what you really have) is a help.

One side note: if something like a machine shop is a prize to the community, it'll be a prize to looters too. Taking the machine shop means gaining real leverage over the community. The same thing applies, I should add, to the local moonshining operation.
An unlikely location. Organized criminals smart enough to use what's left of the Internet will figure out where to send the big batallions. Even a city dweller like me knows full well that there are a lot of preppers in Idaho. Just as bank robbers go to where the money is, chancing the sophisticated detection and alarm system for a chance at the big score, looters will try their luck where the well-stocked preppers are. The best-trained ones will use books like Rawles' Patriots as a reverse training manual. If there are lots of flush preppers in a certain area, the time and expense of pre-training will pay off. It won't for other areas.

Despite the aggravation entailed, the shrewdest place to go might well be a red outpost in a blue State - the kind of high-tax, high-regulation State that preppers normally eschew. Who would expect to see preppers dotting (say) the state of New York or California? The names of those two states are anathema to the patriot movement. Being in places that are the farthest from the stereotypical prepper's esteem is the kind of camo few people consider.

A variant on this idea is to stay in a big city, in a safe but relatively poor area, and making sure to crash diet when TSHTF. If you look and act hungry, then you'll look and act like you've got nothing to steal.

It's also good for that oversized gut :)

Unfortunately, farms can’t be picked up and moved about, they’re pretty darn stationary. They’re also very hard to defend.

An archaeology article I read long ago about a farm in Subroman Britain (5th century AD, i.e. after the emperor Honorius called the Roman legions back to the continent in 409 AD) noticed that almost the first change in occupation patterns was conversion of the Roman farmhouse/villa, which had been decorated for obvious residence, into a strictly work location. Residents removed to hilltops and only came down to the old farmstead, which had been located in the middle of the bottomlands, convenient to the best fields, for work.

Spanish vineyards changed their operations in the 5th and 6th centuries, too -- relocating close to navigable rivers. Similar thinking: quick retreat by water if needed. The old fields and vineyards continued to be worked, but people changed where they lived and slept.

[TMcG] I think your location will get through anything short of a nuclear strike ... but if the mountain men could do it, so can you!

I think you're right. Where he is, short of long-range downwind drift of fallout, his principal problems will revolve, after the first few weeks, around loneliness, boredom, and the cold. Staying by the radio and searching for news/info will fight the first two. Being underground will help with the last ..... since being aboveground and making smoke to stay warm won't get it either.

The Plains Indians, though, had a trick of using buffalo robes and somehow burning buffalo chips on the ground like pipe tobacco in little depressions in the ground, and then sitting on them in their robes to stay warm. Something my great-grandfather, who saw it (he was a buffalo-shooter "white scout" for Custer for a while, right up until the eve of Little Big Horn), told my father about, 70-80 years ago.

Women are the absolute biggest stumbling block to doing just some common sense preparation for any disruption...

With the exception of a tiny number of enlightened ladies (most of whom surely posted to this thread) you are exactly right in all respects. Precisely right. I still get static over my modest-to-the-point-of-ineffectual Y2K preparations (10 gallons of bottled water, $20 worth of extra batteries, $200 cash on hand and a full tank of gas). I've been quietly stockpiling guns, ammo and survival equipment for years. We recently moved and the size of my cache came to light. It was not a happy day. There's no way to stockpile food or gasoline without a colossal fight. I have some ancient cases of C-rations that would be better served in a museum than in my emergency kit, bit it is the best that I can do without starting a war of my own. I hope if the SHTF they are still edible.

But if an enemy wants to eliminate one’s food supply, farm fields and livestock are an easy target.

If one is hiding in the hills, one sits there looking down watching one’s crops being destroyed.

If people can live exactly as the American Indians lived, one can live in nature with no modern machinery.

How many of us can do that and would choose to do that as opposed to being a resistance within ?

And, of course, without modern machinery the American Indians were doomed.

The nazi takeover of Europe during WWII is a very accurate picture of who how a statist regime with para-military police plays out amongst a general population.

The towns that were left alone the most were those which were too small for it to make any sense to devote resources to completely control, and even those had spies in them and were not completely left alone. Basically, in both large cities and small towns, survival within the regime becomes the reality that the population faces.

People soon come to realize that the most dangerous weapon they possess is the ideas and history that they secretly maintain and pass down to their children so that one day, no matter how far in the future, the ideas are there to rise again in power.

Many people who have lived in the mid Atlantic especially Balto-Wash corridor get subtly brainwashed...

Oh gosh, YES. Toss in Northern Virginia and most of Pennsylvania, too. It's wierd how many "social conservatives with invincible liberal assumptions" you meet around here. The other scary thing is that the truism "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged" doesn't wash well here. The folks I know who've been "mugged" by life just get bitter because Someone in Authority didn't spare them. They don't question their assumptions and change their lives. They just become unhappy victims.

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