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
And your car hasn't been keyed or dinged while in the parking lot?
One thing to note, when faced with greater strength or their imminent death, those inner city types suddenly change the attitude to “scuse me, we gots no problem, I gots da wrong address”.
Followed around said house by big ass nasty dogs, never more than a few inches behind.
:D
I looked for this answer of yours when I saw that post to you. At the moment, a handgun is within 14 inches of me. There is a rifle about 12 ft. from me. These weapons are in their rightful place, where they are now, all the time.
My bedroom upstairs has thoughtfully placed handgun by my bed.
So, Mouton, doesn't everyone do this? :o)
two thousand reactionary opinion makers. Men, most of them, who spent nearly every waking moment busily stamping out every little spark of popular democracy, social justice, or true human progress.
Hmmmm...wonder who would be considered in this bunch?
You must live in a really tiny house.
“...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.”
********************************************************************
That probably because the Detroit public bus system didn’t run that far.
As for ‘them’ heading for the ‘burbs, I’m not so sure. I guess it’ll all depend on where they live and what suburbs they’re thinking of venturing into. In NY and the rest of the liberal epicenters, they’ll have a field day. In the south and midwest, I’m not so sure.
But, based on the information in the following video, I think some of them already know what may happen if they leave the confines of their neighborhoods:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VqG_4ADFfQ
Moderate size, 3100 sq ft. I guess if I am completely against the wall of my family room, I am 15 or so feet away from one of my airborn missile launching systems. Take the good with the bad I guess but that occasion is not going to come up unless I am washing the inside of the windows.
I have 10.25 acres that borders a nice creek...and several hundred acres of hardwoods and swamp. My house sits at dead end of road. I see no one and hear no one...except for the coyotes, deer, coons, and a massive ass owl. 15 mins from downtown Atl.
It is around 800 square feet counting the part that goes into the hill below grade...dirt floor....nothing but storage and shelter in that section.
I gave 25 grand for it and the land. It is paid for.
Yep....it is small. Cheap as dirt to cool/heat...and tornado proof. I don't spend much time inside anyway...plus I travel for a living.
While it may be small...at least I didn't lose my ass when the market crashed. At least I ain't paying hundreds of bones a month to cool space no one ever would use.
I can sit in my kitchen with a single shot 12 gA and a pocket full of #4 and own my house. Ain't nobody coming in here without my consent unless they are really good..in tactics and strategy. I have one in my bedroom and one behind the freezer in the kitchen.
God help anyone I have to go out in the dark and find with mini 30 and the dogs. I know this terrain better than anyone...except my dogs. They will die tired and bewildered as to just how I found their ass so fast.
Your turn.
Speaking of “They won’t make it”...
Was heading back east to Georgia from a short job in Dallas...headed through Louisiana on I-20. The night sky was lit up ahead by a fire ravaging a tractor-trailor...mainly the tractor...along the shoulder of the interstate.
Traffic slowed...(Idiots)....as the inside lane was closed...leaving only the fast lane. There was about 5 tractor-trailors ahead of us then a suburu wagon with handicap plates. The big rigs would slow but would hit the gas after passing the inferno that was sure to blow any second now.
THE GOT DANGGED SUBURU STOPPED FOR A GOOD # SECONDS BEFORE MY ASS GOT OUT OF THE VAN AND HEADED FOR THE CAR SCREAMING AS LOUD AS i COULD JUST HOW STUPID THEY WERE...HOW THEY WERE ENDANGERING ALL OF US WITH THEIR IDIOCY!!
Deep breath...exhale....I got to their window before they looked at me with a wide eyed look of idiocy...and slowly gassed the car forward.
I know I took a risk getting out of the van....but either way...had the rig gone up...I was burned bad...I knew them idiots were gonna pull that crap....and I could not sit still whilst the idiots got an eyefull of the carnage.
BTW...I’d lay odds the rig fire was an insurance job.
They are less inclined to do that these days. If something happens to them they never blame themselves. Their first impulse is to hire an ambulance chasing lawyer to sue "someone". It never occurs to them that the "someone" might be themselves.
One person can’t secure a building for long periods. Eventually you have to sleep, fix something, or otherwise live.
Sounds like a nice place though.
Wow, that video is breathtakingly...something.
I get the impression that somehow his underlying message wasn’t “play nice and turn your gangbanger lives around.”
Unless he went to the Samuel L. Jackson School of Public Speaking.
I was taught to try and freeze the enemy with a loud shout-a ki ai, 気合, really.
Now that I'm aging, people are sometimes able to walk right up on me without my noticing. That often causes me to shout and move into a defensive posture, usually startling the crap out of whoever startled me. It's embarrassing, really, both that people are able to walk up on me unnoticed and that I react that way.
People age differently, but years bring decrements in one's superpowers. I probably won't survive long in SHTF, but I try to keep the family together so I can do what I can for them. We only have 3 1/2 trigger pullers, counting my oldest daughter and youngest son as 1/4 each. (That's a matter of temperament, not training)
My son-in-law says we can graft onto his extended family if SHTF, but I wonder. My wife and I never see any of them socially, and I have no reason to think they regard our nucleus as an adjunct branch of their family.
I have two children at home, ages 13 and 14, they know about "Dad's guns", but I have two great grand children visiting for 2 weeks, so for 2 weeks, it's outta sight, outta mind.
I can't teach them enough in 2 weeks to be assured that they would leave them alone. They are ages 4 and 6.
The video is somewhat enlightening but there are so many false assumptions with the man’s tirade that it is of little value. But, like you state, some of the feral humans have just a clue as to what is in store for them if they decide to rampage into the suburbs and rural areas after SHTF.
The suburbs that are adjacent to the inner city hot spots would be prime targets, but the further that marauders wonder out, the more vulnerable they will be.
Matt Bracken does an excellent job of illuminating potential SHTF scenarios. His second article that you listed is great up to the point where he makes a entirely suppositional scenario of ambushing an organized riot/attack. But, the point is made that suburbanites and country folk can deliver just as much pain and suffering to the inner-city thugs as the thugs can deliver, and then some. And also, the thugs are geographically surrounded.
This article by FerFAL is spot on, but I see a flaw in his screed. The Argentines have over a decade of a crushing economy and decades of a completely corrupt government. The Darwin process of weeding out the unfit and sharpening the untrained is very much played. I sense that Fernando laments the women with kids who is unaware as much as he ridicules her. All things considered, we have it quite good in the USA. And that foolish woman has the luxury of being unaware, at least for now.
I keep coming back to this thought. America is not Argentina. We can draw parallels all day but how things happen here when SHTF will not have the same “personality” as it would anywhere else.
where will canibalism start first?
Chicago? NYC? LA? Sanfrancisco?
any island city will be doomed to ugly.
This spent 30 years in the Alaskan bush starting in 1968.
http://www.dickproenneke.com/
Finally came back to civilization at age 82 in 1998.
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