Killer Caravans ...

[JustSomeGuy]

As I've mentioned in a few other "prepping" related posts, all of our preps are focused on self sufficiency and sustainability. Having hands on military experience with combat operations from the platoon through the battalion level, security and defense are part of my assigned responsibilities under the Mutual Assistance Pact I and all of the adjoining property owners maintain. That being said, and bearing OpSec in mind, I will only say that any roving band of marauders that attempts to target our community had better have either an overwhelming number of highly committed members that are willing to die for the aims of their leadership, or an overwhelming technological superiority that would allow them to conduct effective combat operations from well beyond our established standoff distance. Anything short of that will be dealt with efficiently and decisively.

 

[Nosferatu]

Being that I hate people, and especially in large groups. Add a clan mentality on top of that, no I won't be joining.

I'll be watching from high ground while the bearded, tatted urban combat cowboys try to take them on. Should be a good show.

 

[Xaevian]

I put a USPS mail carrier uniform in my closet, so I'm ready.

 

[OldBroad44]

Reality check. Any man imagining he is going to have ten wives or girlfriends because of a social collapse should have expertise in managing slaves. Because that is what you're imagining.

Normally kids leave home. If you don't have an operation big enough to support them and their own families they have to leave. Even family farmers who have operations big enough to support families of grown children are lucky if one of four kids buys into plan and stays home to allow the family farm to survive another generation. My Dad, the oldest son of six kids, beat the sh!t out of his father at age 15. In lawless times, had he not had the option of leaving home he would likely have killed his father and taken over the farm, maybe in turn to be killed by one of his younger brothers. Dad grew up in the depression but it wasn't lawless times. So don't imagine your grown children are going to be complient slaves either.

Middle East owners of harems, in history or fiction, had eunuch slaves to manage the harems, and often died of being poisoned by harem members, who also often poisoned each other and each other's offspring. Everyone who was anyone had food tasters, poisonings were so normal. Figure that with ten wives/girlfriends/slaves, none of them love you in the least. Any of them would be ready to help their secret lover, who is not screvving 9 nine other women, murder you and take over the resources.

 

[Knobgoblin]

Reality check. Any man imagining he is going to have ten wives or girlfriends because of a social collapse should have expertise in managing slaves. Because that is what you're imagining.

Normally kids leave home. If you don't have an operation big enough to support them and their own families they have to leave. Even family farmers who have operations big enough to support families of grown children are lucky if one of four kids buys into plan and stays home to allow the family farm to survive another generation. My Dad, the oldest son of six kids, beat the sh!t out of his father at age 15. In kawless times, had he not had the option of leaving home he would likely have killed his father and taken over the farm, maybe in turn to be killed by one of his younger brothers. Dad grew up in the depression but it wasn't lawless times. So don't imagine your grown children are going to be complient slaves either.

Middle East owners of harems, in history or fiction, had eunuch slaves to manage the harems, and often died of being poisoned by harem members, who also often poisoned each other and each other's offspring. Everyone who was anyone had food tasters, poisonings were so normal. Figure that with ten wives/girlfriends/slaves, none of them love you in the least. Any of them would be ready to help their secret lover, who is not screvving 9 nine other women, murder you and take over the resources.

Harsh facts.
Add to this the simple fact that old world subservience could only exist as a continuation of an ingrained belief system . Anyone alive in our society today is far and away too well informed to believe in a "Warren Jeffs " sales pitch, even after a Yellowstone earthquake.

 

[P7M13]

Reality check. Any man imagining he is going to have ten wives or girlfriends because of a social collapse should have expertise in managing slaves. Because that is what you're imagining.

Normally kids leave home. If you don't have an operation big enough to support them and their own families they have to leave. Even family farmers who have operations big enough to support families of grown children are lucky if one of four kids buys into plan and stays home to allow the family farm to survive another generation. My Dad, the oldest son of six kids, beat the sh!t out of his father at age 15. In kawless times, had he not had the option of leaving home he would likely have killed his father and taken over the farm, maybe in turn to be killed by one of his younger brothers. Dad grew up in the depression but it wasn't lawless times. So don't imagine your grown children are going to be complient slaves either.

Middle East owners of harems, in history or fiction, had eunuch slaves to manage the harems, and often died of being poisoned by harem members, who also often poisoned each other and each other's offspring. Everyone who was anyone had food tasters, poisonings were so normal. Figure that with ten wives/girlfriends/slaves, none of them love you in the least. Any of them would be ready to help their secret lover, who is not screvving 9 nine other women, murder you and take over the resources.

Oh, snap! There goes that fantasy....

 

[OldBroad44]

Oh, snap! There goes that fantasy....

Sorry.
I've had equally ridiculous fantasies but mostly prepubertal.
Now at age 75 most possible social breakdown fantasies are unworkable.

 

[P7M13]

Sorry.
I've had equally ridiculous fantasies but mostly prepubertal.
Now at age 75 most possible fantasies are unworkable.

Never had such a fantasy, why compound issues by an order of magnitude ?
Besides, as I age, my goals shift too, recognizing the limits of the continuum.
Fantasies died long ago at the hands of achieving some of said daydreams and learning they were fool's errands, aka reach the "gold" and discover it's pyrite.

 

[OldBroad44]

Harsh facts.
Add to this the simple fact that old world subservience could only exist as a continuation of an ingrained belief system . Anyone alive in our society today is far and away too well informed to believe in a "Warren Jeffs " sales pitch, even after a Yellowstone earthquake.

Right. Religion was strong, and one of the main things it taught was divine right of kings. Slavery had to be supported by large complex societies or slaves simply ran away, sometimes killing the owners in the process. In the slavery era South it was illegal to teach a slave to read, and slaves who learned might be beaten to death. And the Mason Dixon line actually corresponds to the line between SE Indians, who had more slavery than NE Indians. If a Negro slave escaped a plantation into the swamps, SE Indians would usually catch him and sell him back to the owners. But in the NE, the Indians would mostly help an escaped slave go/stay free. So slavery was less workable in the NE because the surrounding society, namely, the Indians, didn't support it.

 

[Soli]

Kurt Saxon's (hahahaha I actually remember his stuff from BITD) take on things is ludicrous, specifically collapse either from bad economics or nuclear war being the same thing. It's all TEOTWAWKI to him. lol

Modern history has lots of the first and zero of the latter (or anything approaching it).

The problem with collapse scenarios of most people is that, in reality, collapse takes a long time. Years. Plenty of time to see it coming. The most destructive recent collapse (Yugoslavia) took years until things actually came to violence. Collapse (economic or political) doesn't destroy all, it creates a vacuum into which others move. The USSR is a real life example of such. Took years, and in the end never went kinetic. Even colonial creations (Syria, India, Rwanda) that collapsed didn't "revert" to clan/tribal allegiances. They were already there. And in none of the above did roving bands of marauders marching around raping and pillaging as a way of surviving make an appearance.

Collapse caused by mass physical destruction? Who knows? Again, all modern examples are war based and arguably weren't collapses, they were occupations. Could it happen? I guess. Tho prepping successfully for such a thing seems like flipping a coin 10 times and having it come up heads all 10 times.

So, the whole Saxon, et. al. hoard thing is IMO fantasy. I don't prep for that. I prep for things that are likely to happen.

 

[OldBroad44]

The problem with collapse scenarios of most people is that, in reality, collapse takes a long time. Years. Plenty of time to see it coming.... ...

So, the whole Saxon, et. al. hoard thing is IMO fantasy. I don't prep for that. I prep for things that are likely to happen.

Not all collapses take a long time or gave plenty of time to see it coming except in a sense so general and time-unpredictable a fashion as to be mostly useless. For example, many people predicted the mortgage security collapse. And a number tried to use that prediction to make money. But most lost their stake before the collapse. Only a very few got the timing exactly right. There was every reason during my childhood to think that a nuclear wwIII was inevitable. And in fact, we came very close a number of times. But if you had run off into your bomb shelter in the wilderness in the 60s, you'd still be there waiting. If you waited for some more time-specific warning you might have missed Cuba and certainly would have missed two other close calls no one knew about until years after the fact. (We didn't know the warheads were already on the missiles in Cuba until afterwards. We thought our blockade was preventing the warheads from getting to Cuba and being combined with missiles.)

Another problem is that you get lots more warnings that don't pan out than do. So the situation is not that things are peaceful, then you see a warning and heed it. Its that you are getting warnings all the time, and most will be nothing. And if you heeded all the warnings you would have no time for an ordinary life accomplishing real things, earning a living, raising a family, etc. Your problem is to heed the one that turns out to matter even though it might have looked less credible or important than many others that didn't materialize.

Prepping for things likely to happen is a good idea. I call it making yourself resilient to disasters small large and small, starting with the small. Start by storing a few five gallon buckets of water. That was useful when I lived in Corvallis and the city water became rusty and cruddy for a day after they worked on pipes. Or when electricity goes off and well pump doesn't work here outside the city. Store xtra food of staples you use. Extra garden seed. Enough of a nest egg so that if you couldn't work a few months it wouldn't destroy you completely. Don't depend on just in time delivery of anything you can't do without. I'm not young enough or affluent enough to do heroic expensive prepping. But when covid hit, I had everything I needed except rubbing alcohol. And an adult foster care home I had been supplying with Prime winter squash for years gave me rubbing alcohol until I could resupply. Your community and connections is part of your resilence.

 

[Soli]

Not all collapses take a long time or gave plenty of time to see it coming except in a sense so general and time-unpredictable a fashion as to be mostly useless. ...

lol you're not wrong. I've seen relationships collapse in the space of three drinks.

Financial collapses in general are an example of fast, though not as fast as some think. Even 2007-08 market crash took 18+ months to reach bottom, plenty of time to sell (at a loss) before having to sell (at a huge loss) if you couldn't ride it out. The housing market took 3+ years to reach bottom. From 2006 to 2016 there were about 4 million 'excess' foreclosures (those over the pre-recession average of foreclosures for 10 years). In 2012 there were about 87 million homes owned. So probably about 4.5% more folks lost their homes 4.5% of homeowners lost their homes that wouldn't have without the crash. than would have anyway. (edited: hurdur... do I even statistics man?!?)

I'd argue 95% of home owners "prepped" for the housing crash just in the way they lived. Have a financial plan that if things go to bubblegum you don't lose your house. No need to see it coming.

Is that hard to do? For some apparently. For most however just staying old school (be honest with yourself about your income and expenses, don't spend more than you have coming in, know the real risks taking on debt and have a realistic plan for servicing it, save for a rainy day, know the real risks of your investments, stay skilled and therefore valuable) will be all the prepping they need for most financial collapse.

 

[gmerkt]

Your mormon neighbors are definitely strapped.

That's what I've been told before about others. Don't figure you can rely on their one year food supply by going over and trying ti heist it.

 

[gmerkt]

Is that hard to do? For some apparently. For most however just staying old school (be honest with yourself about your income and expenses, don't spend more than you have coming in, know the real risks taking on debt and have a realistic plan for servicing it, save for a rainy day, know the real risks of your investments, stay skilled and therefore valuable) will be all the prepping they need for most financial collapse.

This advice is ignored by a large segmant of the US population. Percentages vary from 25% to 38% to 63% as to the number of households that couldn't come up with $500 cash in case of emergency. Even on the low side, that is pathetic. Living for the moment, sitting on the sofa eating Walmart cheese puffs out of the big container, thinking all is well. When every once in a while, it's not.

 

[Nosferatu]

lol you're not wrong. I've seen relationships collapse in the space of three drinks.

Financial collapses in general are an example of fast, though not as fast as some think. Even 2007-08 market crash took 18+ months to reach bottom, plenty of time to sell (at a loss) before having to sell (at a huge loss) if you couldn't ride it out. The housing market took 3+ years to reach bottom. From 2006 to 2016 there were about 4 million 'excess' foreclosures (those over the pre-recession average of foreclosures for 10 years). In 2012 there were about 87 million homes owned. So probably about 4.5% more folks lost their homes 4.5% of homeowners lost their homes that wouldn't have without the crash. than would have anyway. (edited: hurdur... do I even statistics man?!?)

I'd argue 95% of home owners "prepped" for the housing crash just in the way they lived. Have a financial plan that if things go to bubblegum you don't lose your house. No need to see it coming.

Is that hard to do? For some apparently. For most however just staying old school (be honest with yourself about your income and expenses, don't spend more than you have coming in, know the real risks taking on debt and have a realistic plan for servicing it, save for a rainy day, know the real risks of your investments, stay skilled and therefore valuable) will be all the prepping they need for most financial collapse.

I agree with the premise, but in SHTF, my credit score is going to be at the bottom of anything I'm concerned with. I guarantee you the dept payments stop post haste.

That being said, I don't extend myself beyond what I can handle. Yeah, I have some dept right now, but it's low interest (zero in most cases) and could be paid off in 6 months if I wanted it to be. That's not because of some SHTF scenerio, but because I believe in responsible spending.

 

[Stomper]

As for the scenario in the OP….. all I see are fresh sandbags still on the hoof.

 

[Knobgoblin]

As for the scenario in the OP….. all I see are fresh sandbags still on the hoof.

Have you ever wondered...
Exactly how many human heads can you fit in a standard, full size pickup truck bed?

Because I think about it a lot.

 

[Nosferatu]

Have you ever wondered...
Exactly how many human heads can you fit in a standard, full size pickup truck bed?

Because I think about it a lot.

"standard" as in 6.5' or 8' bed? To the top of the bedrails or the cab?

Heads neatly stacked, or dumped in?

Nope, never thought of it.

 

[Knobgoblin]

"standard" as in 6.5' or 8' bed? To the top of the bedrails or the cab?

Heads neatly stacked, or dumped in?

Nope, never thought of it.

I swear to you, it all started with pumpkins and watermelons.
And the mind wanders down that dark road.

 

[Nosferatu]

I swear to you, it all started with pumpkins and watermelons.
And the mind wanders down that dark road.

Melons are melons. The source is irrelevant.