Posted on 06/22/2013 8:34:12 AM PDT by VRW Conspirator
It happened a few years ago during a trip to USA for the Self Reliance expo in Utah. After the expo we decided to go have dinner to this place nearby. Jack Spirko was driving and as he turned to enter a parking lot he had to hit the breaks to avoid running over a woman and her two brats that just walked in front of the car without a care in the world. “People like these, they will be the first ones to go when SHTF” said Jack.
You know what? Jack was right. People like that are the ones that will suffer the most during disasters, even the ones that are more likely to die as life gets harder.
Now that I live in a more civilized part of the world I see it all the time as well. Whenever we witness some Darwin defying stupidity, my wife usually shakes her head and says “some of these people, they wouldn’t last a week in Argentina without getting killed”, and I know she’s right on a number of levels.
First, there’s that level of utter stupidity that makes zombies look like theoretical physicists. These are people that that not only walk without the most basic level of awareness, as in the minimum required not to get run over by cars when crossing the street and playing with your cellphone, but they also lack the most elemental parenting instinct so as to watch over their kids too. I’ve lost count already of the people that I’ve seen walking and crossing the street as if walking across their living room. I’m 100% certain that as my wife says, these people would be dead within a week in Buenos Aires just because of buses, taxi drivers, lack of proper street signaling and the average nutcase behind the wheel which is the typical Argentine driver.
I see parents letting they kids wonder away like they wouldn’t do with the dog they are walking, taking for granted that some good Samaritan will find their kid and return it to them, rather that kidnap the child for ransom or worse.
Then there’s the absolute ignorance regarding anything that slightly resembles home and personal security. People might as well put signs on the door saying please rob me. The doors and lock themselves are a joke which is bad enough, but then to make it even worse people leave their doors opened all the time. I’ve lost count of the people that came to my home to deliver something or do some repairing and were stunned that I dare close the gate to my back yard! You close your front AND BACK door? Madness! Again, you don’t get away with that for long in most of South America.
To some degree I can somehow justify most of it. They walk like children in a playground because they are used to cars stopping waiting for them to cross. They take for granted the drivers will see them, will stop, will be responsible drivers. They just aren’t used to moving around in a world where a third of the people driving wouldn’t have passed a proper driving test or bus drivers that, I kid you not, at least half of them are clinically insane.
Same goes for security. People here, most of them have never been mugged in their life, most have never seen the wrong end of a gun barrel. They’ve never suffered a home invasion or even know friends of family that have gone through that. Its all so distant and unreal to them. Not long ago there was this scam going around here. A guy would knock on people’s door, claim to be from the power or cable company saying there was a problem with their billing, and people would downright give them their credit card and banking information! In Buenos Aires I doubt anyone would have opened the door to them, let alone give away you credit card like that.
If we add to this the general self-indulgence and lack of maturity shown by many adults, then you start wondering how will a lot of these people fare even with a slight degradation of their perfectly safe, idiot-proof world.
There’s always exceptions, but for some reason they seem to be a clear minority. A significant number of people cant take care of themselves, let alone their kids. They struggle during the good times they wouldn’t even know where to begin in the bad ones.
People have to toughen up. They have to become more aware, more responsible for themselves and their own families. I’m not even talking about material preparations here. I’m talking about a significant change of mindset and attitude towards life, one that those lacking it have no way of making it if disaster or even just hard times strike.
FerFAL
They kids be wonder like that? Fo' shizzle?
BFL. Interesting read.
We employ locks and deadbolts all the time along with a security system and no where in my home am I more than 10 feet from a ready to go airborn home defense system aka shotgun or pistol.
Oh no, they will survive a while. They have had to survive in a world where everything that is not locked behind doors, chained to the floor, and wrapped with wire is stolen. The Obamaphone types (be they black, white, brown or yellow) know how to get what they want—when they need to.
They are used to violence and fighting. I haven’t lived that way for a long time. My kids have never lived that way.
No, you will lose a lot more in the suburbs than the inner city.
The inner city will go due to violence, but they will march into the suburbs and get what they want. Until someone shoots them.
My home is a very dangerous place for anyone who wishes me harm.
I'm amazed at the number of late model, expensive vehicles which I see around here still sporting Obama bumper stickers.
Most of the rest of us drive basic transportation and have long since either removed our stickers for the other guy or replaced them with clever stickers saying something like "Don't Blame Me. I voted for the American."
And I just saw the first person drive by my place in over a week. Sometimes it’s month’s especially in the winter.
Location, location, Location. I’m pretty sure that less than fifty people in the whole county know I’m here.
The traffic in BA is horrendous, but it doesn't hold a candle to the Shah's Teheran or Tokyo. Still, BA was the best place in the world to eat world class beef or consume excellent Andean wine.
Two good pieces on what may happen when SHTF:
http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/what-i-saw-at-the-coup/
One is kind of a essay, the other fictional.
NSA and nobama know.
Take a lookie.
Yep, There’s no escaping from the Eye of Sauron I’m Afraid.
I noticed you said "Until" not "Unless." Conservative working class suburbs like mine will shoot them a lot sooner than the ritzy liberal suburbs surrounding bigger cities like Philadelphia and New York.
When I was a kid living overseas in an Asian Country, the house we lived in had a nice high concrete wall with broken glass cemented into the top of it. All of the windows had bars on them even the Garage had a barred cage door. You might have thought we lived in a prison and therefore was ‘safe’.
Ha! The thieves could break in, strip you bare in less than five minutes if they thought you had something they wanted. I learned there that one of the best defense was total obscurity, drive a dirty looking vehicle, wear plain looking clothes, try to blend in, even if that worked only from a distance. It could mean a big difference, if you were being profiled in preparation for... whatever.
I once knew a guy who swore his parents would take him to Coney Island and immediately lose him, so that they could enjoy their day without him until they picked him up at the lost-child shelter when it was time to go home.
what a BS article. the guy makes it sound like its a problem you have never been mugged. stupid.
There are many parallels with the USA and Argentina. But, I keep coming back to one idea. American is not Argentina. Yes, when the SHTF, there will be more crime and more havoc in America. But the backbone of America is not full of socialists. FWIW
Was his name Rodney Dangerfield?
I'm not so sure. I lived in the suburbs of Detroit during the 1967 Detroit riots and my neighbors were getting their guns out, expecting the rioting minorities to come marching up Woodward Avenue. But they never got far from their hood.
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