Posted on 03/07/2012 5:45:27 PM PST by Kartographer
From the society’s wealthiest and most powerful class to rural off-the-grid types, people are preparing for the worst, and sparing no expense on elaborate underground shelters, buying years’ worth of non-perishable foods and stockpiling fuel and ammunition. Some have embraced the term “preppers,” although precisely what they are preparing for varies.
“We realized that we were totally unprepared should something happen,” said Jack Jobe, who was prompted to prep for a natural disaster after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Jobe, who will be featured on an upcoming episode of the NatGeo’s “Doomsday Preppers,” has invested about $3,000 in a safe room in the cellar of his family’s Colorado home. The basement bunker has reinforced steel doors, along with two 55-gallon drums of water, a four-month supply of food and a cache of guns and ammunition. “Fleeing won’t be an option,” Jobe told FoxNews.com. “We are ready to survive in place.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The irony of most preps - preparing for pole reversals is similar to an EMP strike or solar flares - actions taken assuming grid down and high tech lost. Prepping for Peak Oil is not unlike hyperinflation - world becomes local and fuel too costly to be reliable. Prepping for a pandemic a la “Rainbow 6” by Tom Clancy or super-flu is the same, and most of that still works out if there’s a hurricane or all the kids get sick with the same bug but not all at once.
Probably a consequence of a lot of cable shows being shot in Canada. Same thing was true of Sci-Fi shows and movies, having to go out of their way to have a token black or brown person.
Well, this is fiction, and where movies are made PC rules. The truly uncomfortable thing for me is that in the last ten years or so every disaster or world threatening movie has a president, all generals and critical scientists in the story from a cultural group that comprises 15 percent of the population, but perhaps 1% of the academic, professional achievers and leaders.
In the real world profiling during serious crises will be not only acceptable but essential for survival. You can be PC or survive. Can't do both.
The scam artists are out in force with this survivalist stuff. Just watched a survivalist episode on the Discovery channel which was painful to watch. Some poor sap was spending almost half a million$ for a prefab steel-frame bunker where the fabricator had his teenage son with serious attitude deficit doing the welding and abusing the other workers, and the "managers" of this serious project seem to be overqualified in certain areas, and seriously deficient in others. NONE seem to be competent in structural design, the essentials of soil engineering and drainage, concrete construction where necessary (as opposed to concrete blocks) and common sense incidentals.
Example, at another project, a new generator was installed in a concrete block box which was buried with enough of it above grade to allow criminals to destroy the door and steal the generator. The box was probably not prepared properly to prevent water infiltration. To add stupidity to gross ineptness, the criminals now know the location of a supply of expensive and crucial (and expensive) survival stores and equipment that can't be moved.
No "shelter" for human habitation can be made immune to loss by a determined mob, by flooding out, digging out, burning out, blowing up or smoking/gassing out.
“Fixed fortifications are a monument to man’s stupidity” - General George S. Patton
In a time and mentality of TEOTWAWKI, mobility will be a valuable asset. Why would you erase an asset by creating a bunker? All one has to do is block the air intake.
We’ve had this discussion in my family - hunker down vs. bug out. The military disadvantages of defending my particular “bunker” far outweigh the advantages of bugging out to a different locale.
I agree that if you wait too long then getting on the road is pretty much certain death for anything but a well-armed and disciplined convoy. At the same time if you remain in an urban area or close in suburban area a single family in traditional housing WILL be dead/ raped/robbed in 10-30 days. A typical family home is simply indefensible and the zombies will come.
Any father who keeps his family in their suburban home is ordering his wife and children to die in place defending it. Or soon starve. IMHO.
Amen. Long ago we determined that our suburban home is not the place to stay and defend in a TEOTWAWKI scenario. For lesser upheavals we could easily do 30 days at home. The issue is discerning the difference between lesser and greater scenarios. If we wait too long the danger in transit to our bug out location rises exponentially.
“The military disadvantages of defending my particular “bunker” far outweigh the advantages of bugging out to a different locale.”
IMO you cannot just say any one thing is better than another as a blanket statement. There are a million variables and it depends what happens.
In some cases it will be better to be near a population center. In a localized short term disruption the population centers get aid and protection faster.
In other cases the ‘authorities’ might go farm to farm collecting hoarded food and/or people for the greater good. A few people with hunting rifles may work against a small disorganized group but doesn’t have a chance against an organized well trained military detachment.
Its impossible to be “mobile” for an extended period of time in a mad max scenerio. Simply too hard to obtain the resources to survive and defend against attack.
IMO a bunker has its uses but people should be prepared to relocate. In either case there are events beyond your control which may kill you regardless of which decisions you make.
There are certain emergencies that would also preclude bugging in -
chemical release, nuclear fallout, earthquake, etc.
Absolutely, I did a basic risk management process for my planning. Identified the risks, tried to quantify probability, timeframes, and ways to mitigate the risk.
Of course I don’t have the resources to do much about it, but at least I have a plan for each of the possibilities.
There’s also the inverse relationship between the “widespreadedness” of a disaster and its likelihood.
In the extreme:
You’re more likely to personally experience a jobloss or debilitating accident
than the earth is to be hit by an asteroid.
Had my bank account hacked two days ago.
While I was at my bank closing the account and opening a new one, I chatted with the bank VP. The subject of street crime came up.
She said, “We have police officers and constables who provide security for our bank. They tell me that there is an explosion of street crime in the city, but the news media is covering it up.”
Interesting data point. We are fast becoming Argentina.
How did you determine this?
I must confess, this statement reminded me of Michael Crichton's famous evaluation of the Drake Equation: what use is an equation whose variables are totally unknown, and can be anything from zero to infinity?
Hey, don’t laugh. That would be me. I’ve wanted a tornado shelter for years but between having no money and the water level too high to dig down, well, it’s not happening. Besides, with my luck, the house would fall on both the vent pipe and the escape hatch.
Actually, given the way the world is moving (and inflation), I'm starting to wonder if one could go overboard on this. I know I've done a lot, and yet not nearly enough.
This was not an off-the-cuff remark. It was a carefully considered statement based on a good deal of personal experience, book study, as well as interviewing a USMC officer.
HEre’s why I have reached the conclusion that a typical suburban house in indefensible. (I challenge you to describe how you and your family in your suburban frame dwelling could survive an attack from armed zombies.)
We will bug out because to stay in our home is to invite a cruel death for my family.
Typical household construction provides inadequate ballistic protection. In other words, you might have concealment, but you don’t have cover. A .45 ACP will pass right through a frame house. A high-powered rifle round will penetrate the brick facia. NET: your house is NOT protection from gunfire unless you build berms or add sandbags.
a family does not have enough people to stand guard 24 X 7 X 360 degrees.
a typical family does not have enough people with the right mindset and training to stand guard and repel an attacking force.
There is little chance of providing overwatch.
Visible defenses will attract unwelcome attention.
Visible life-sustaining activities will attract unwelcome attention; such a cooking smoke, smell of hot food, barking dogs, generators running, light leaks.
a typical family cannot cover and defend muitple points of ingress/ attack.
a typical family home is ready-made to be burned down by attackers.
a wounded family member will extraordinarily adversely affect the combat effectiveness of the family as a fighting force. If your spouse takes a round, and is screaming in pain from a gut shot, will YOU keep fighting?
a typical family under attack in their home has little chance of retreating to a rally point and living to fight another day - no mobility.
a typical family cannot hold off a low intensity siege — you cannot maintain an operational tempo.
a typical family cannot maintain a perimeter and a layered defense.
NET: a typical family in their home lacks the infrastructure, training and numbers to defend a fixed location from determined attackers, espeically attackers who are desperate and believe you have what they want — ammo, guns, food and women.
You can double down to your heart’s content.
Attempting to give an evaluation when you don’t know the quantity and quality of attackers, nor defenders, is what we in the el toro poopu detection community know as a “guess.”
You want to “bug out?” Fine. But insisting that abandoning all the resources you can’t carry with you, as a matter of course, is just asinine.
You are welcome to have a different opinion. FReerepublic is about that.
My concern for your position is that *IF* you live in a typical subrban setting, in a typical American stick-built house, etc etc., then you need to think this through better if the nation degrades to a SHTF scenario.
Indeed neither of us ‘knows’ our enemy. I am concerned that you have underestimated your potential if not likely enemies.
Instead of just repeating your disagreement with our plans, I encourage you to evaluate yours.
As a quantitative and qualitative guide to assessing your ability to defend your home, I suggest “Holding Your Ground” by Joe Nobody. It’s on Amazon and Kindle. This book helped us confirm, using sensible rationale and a good ‘spreadsheet’ model, for us, (maybe not you) what we had already leaned heavily towards: that the best place to be in a full SHTF situation is at our place bordering the Nantalhala national forest in NC. We have that option. We can pre-stage items there. *THAT* property *IS* remote, we can monitor ingress, easily situate for overwatch, has its own water, REQUIRES 4-wheel drive to access (or approach on foot or horseback) etc etc etc. It is FAR superior to our ‘typical five-four-and-a-door’ subrban home outside Atlanta.
Seriously, can you confidently and sufficiently address what it takes to SUCCESSFULLY defend your home and SUSTAIN that defense **IF** you need to?
If you can honestly say yes to the queries below, then go for it. We **cannot** so we have a bug out plan.
Does your home offer cover, concealment and ballistic protection.
Do you have enough people to stand guard 24 X 7 X 360 degrees.
Will you have enough people with the right mindset and training to stand guard and repel an attacking force.
Can you prepare and post overwatch.
Can you get water and prepare meals without venturing out for several days
Can youcover and defend muitple points of ingress/ attack.
Can you prevent your ‘castle’ from being burned down by attackers.
IF you or a family member is wounded during an attack, will YOU or they keep fighting?
Do you have a realistic chance of retreating to a rally point and living to fight another day.
Can you maintain an operational tempo in the face of even a low intensity siege
Can you maintain a perimeter and a layered defense.
***IF** it all falls apart, we will all have to live or die based on plans we execute now.
NET: This is our opinion, and our rationale. You need not share it, as your situation may be fundamentally different. If however you are a typical suburban family, then I strongly encourage you to seriously consider contingency plans that include “bug out”.
Have a great Friday.
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