security

Disruptions In Daily Routine And People Panic

Often people wonder why most preppers are secretive. Many of them limit the number of people who know they are preppers, and how much they have stored for food and survival equipment.

Some people feel that you shouldn’t hide what you’ve got stored. You should form a community for survival. You will need the help of the community people to survive. I would like to explain why I don’t think this is true in the beginning of a SHTF scenario.

First of all, when you have your ‘event’ or catastrophe, panic will happen in many people. Chances are, these people that panic will be some of the first ones to not make it through the situation. Why? Panic consumes people. Their routine has just been taken from them, their minds can’t grasp onto anything, except what is no longer there. What is happening? Where is the fire department? Where are the police? What should I do? There is no reasoning ability.

Panic is an intense period of fear or apprehension that comes on suddenly and could take days to subside. Perhaps you have seen some news video of them during an earthquake and they are just standing on the sidewalk with a stupified, blank look on their face. For all intensive purposes, they are clueless.

In fact, Ken and I saw two individuals yesterday who confirmed our thinking. We were making a quick trip to the local grocery store. There was no SHTF scenario, but yet we still encountered two people that panicked. Why? Well, let me tell you the little story.

We were just getting ready to approach the last stretch of road to the store parking lot. Shortly before the lot, the road sort of forks. You can bear to the left, staying on the main road and go to the shopping center, or you can turn right, up a hill to another neighborhood. As soon as we came around the little bend to the fork area, you could see them. Department of transportation workers, with half of the intersection blocked off, digging holes in the road with a cop on duty. Which half of the road was closed? It was the left side leading to the shopping center, with a clearly placed detour sign.

There were two cars in front of us containing the two people that panicked because of a traffic detour! The first car in line approaches the police officer who puts up his entire left arm and points that first car to the fork on the right. The first car (Car #1) starts veering to their left toward the officer. The officer kept moving his arm in and out pointing that the car should veer to the right and go up the hill. HELLO! You can’t take the road to the left as it was completely blocked off. Your only options were to turn around or go to the right and follow the detour signs! This wasn’t rocket science, what question could this person possibly have for the officer? After about 30 seconds of confusion he turns and goes up the hill to the right, as the officer was getting irritated as you could tell by his arm movements. Car # 2 follows as did we.

Immediately after starting up the hill  on the right, there were detour signs everywhere, guiding you where to go. Car #1 was driving ridiculously slow. Braking and debating whether or not to take a side street instead of just following the detour signs. Total confusion. Braking and incredibly slow driving. First of all, there was absolutely no reason to be braking. It was pretty obvious, there was a little panic setting in because his regular driving routine was taken from him. He makes an indecisive left turn and disappears from sight. All he would have had to do is to follow the detour signs. He is probably still lost and driving around that neighborhood!

Car #2 is also doing ridiculous braking maneuvers and crawling along. Then his right signal light goes on! Ken and I were actually happy since it meant this idiot wouldn’t be in front of us anymore. As we are approaching, ready to pass him as he starts to take his right turn, all of a sudden, with his right blinker on, he makes a left turn! What the??

Obviously these two drivers were in a little bit of a panic because of a traffic detour! Their driving routines were interrupted and they had absolutely no idea how to handle the situation. Their ability to think was gone. Ken and I knew that there was only one way back onto the main shopping center road from this neighborhood and WOW, that happened to be the way the detour signs were taking us!!! In a short  bit of driving, Ken and I were in the shopping center parking lot. We didn’t see Car #1 or Car #2, so who knows where they ended up.

Now imagine, if this is the type of irrational behavior one sees due to a traffic detour, IMAGINE the behavior you will witness from people during a SHTF event!  In the beginning of the event, these people that are panicked (and who have no thinking ability), will be there creating chaos and problems for those who are thinking people with logic, common sense, who have prepared or thought through issues that are not part of their normal routine.

I just thought I would mention this because of how often we see this type of people in our day to day lives and we wonder how they could possibly deal with a disaster or anything out of their normal lives. All the more reason to prepare yourself!

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Lock Picking

Is lock picking just for criminals? No it is not. Learning about locks and knowing how to pick a lock may expose vulnerabilities in your own home and help you to harden it, it will help you to improve your own security, and will provide you with a practical skill which may prove beneficial from a survival standpoint.

Learn the fundamentals of pin and wafer tumbler locks and learn how to exploit their weaknesses. Learn picking techniques such as lifting and raking. Learn about tension and jiggler tools. Learn shimming, bumping, and bypassing.

While browsing various categories of books related to survival preparedness and security, I came across this top rated one, written by Deviant Ollam, one of the security industry’s best-known lock picking teachers,
Practical Lock Picking: A Physical Penetration Tester’s Training Guide

Having skill sets are prerequisite to self reliance and self sufficiency. Understanding and knowing the basic fundamentals of locks and how to pick locks, will open your eyes as to what a common (or professional) burglar knows and will shed much light on to your own security situation with regards to door locks and more.

The prepper community puts a substantial amount of time into their own security, and often mistakenly discounts or is ignorant to the skills of their potential enemy. The tables can be turned if you understand what they know, and have the ability to do what they can do. Being able to quietly unlock a door into an abandoned warehouse (or fill-in-the-blank) in a lawless post-collapse world, will be a very high advantage for you. While we obviously do not advocate breaking the law, we also realize that the social situation could potentially be quite different in a world that has cratered into violence and chaos.

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Who Will Be The Enemy After The Collapse?

“Know your enemy” (from the ancient Chinese military text “The Art of War”), is always good advice when strategizing security. In the context of a post collapse society, this is also true. Who will be your enemy?

First of all, it will be ‘people’.

In a wide scale society-impacting disaster scenario, when the consciousness of the people is transitioning from full awareness to desperation (and probably before that to a lesser extent), there will be a definitive stereotype of individual and group(s) who will become your greatest risk to your overall security.

Apart from an invading army or a government turned against it’s people, the enemy will be…

They will be mostly ‘younger’, the age when most feel all powerful and invincible.

They will not have prepared in any way. The concept of prepping may have been beyond their financial capabilities or it had never entered their mind.

Their attitude will be (and mostly has been) to simply go out and take what they need, when they need it. This is the easy way for them, and they will be convinced that they can do it with impunity (invincible).

Many of this type have already faced tough/harsh conditions in their regular lives on the streets, and have been hardened from it.

They are used to violence.

They will band together in groups and are comfortable with a hierarchy of command and control. They will gravitate towards each other and be indoctrinated into organizations (gangs).

These are the people that we should fear the most during a worst-case post disastrous collapse. I do not mean fear in the sense of trembling from fright or giving passive respect, I mean ‘logical’ fear or a realization of threat… something to prepare for or have a plan against.

Planning a passive, defensive, or offensive strategy to survive this enemy may be far different than what you may have thought. This enemy is ready and willing to export violence, and will have no qualms doing so. They are not the type who will politely knock on your door. They are the type who will purposely seek out prey while looking for opportunities, weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

‘If’ things were ever to decay to the point where a large portion of the immediate population is in despair or desperate straits, chances are high that many preppers (and others) will encounter this enemy. The question is, what can you do to prevent it and what will you do if you cannot?

It’s best to plan ahead for the ‘what if’s’. It’s also best to take a look at your situation from the outside looking in. In other words, imagine as though you are a scout for the gang as you pass by your place. What do you look like to them? Are you an obvious target? If so, why? Is your home or location easily visible and/or vulnerable? What are the things you can do to create more deterrents so that you may be passed by?

Also ask yourself this… What will you do if a group of thugs bash into your home from the back and the front with overwhelming force? Think it couldn’t happen? Home invasions happen all the time, and we’re not even in a collapse situation!

There are very many questions and there are even more answers to them, all worth lots of words and discussion. The intent of this is to invite you to understand and accept who your greatest enemy may be, should our society collapse into a heap of dung.

Once you accept that, then it’s on to solutions… to follow.

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The Post Disaster Security Timeline

It is an important thing to realize that there is a security timeline of events following a disaster, and how human behavior can be predictably used to your advantage in the hours, days and weeks into a disaster.

The post-disaster security timeline can be split into five segments of time (the event, search-and-rescue, awareness and realization, desperation, restructuring).

Each part of the timeline (the x-axis) has a corresponding security risk magnitude (the y-axis) which begins low, builds to a high, and tapers off afterwards.

Knowing when the security risks are lowest and highest, will enable you to implement your own strategy while taking advantage of this knowledge. For example, you may wish to resupply when security risks are lower and you may wish to stay out of sight or lay low when the risks are higher.

Lets look at the five segments individually…

The Event

This is ‘the event’ which begins the timeline. It is the shortest segment, but it is the time of initial disaster. It could be a natural event (earthquake, tornado, hurricane, tsunami, volcano, flood, asteroid impact, solar flare, pole reversal, alien invasion, etc.) or it could be a man-made event (terrorist attack, beginning of war, nuclear detonation, nuclear meltdown, EMP attack, etc.).

The initial event itself could last seconds, minutes, hours, or possibly longer (e.g. the follow-on effects of volcanic ash spreading or radioactive fallout drift from the initial detonation zone).

Search and Rescue

This timeline segment is the time immediately following the disaster. Most people instinctively reach out to one another during this time. They band together and help those in need, rescue those who need rescuing, and share their food and supplies with those who don’t have their own. People who ordinarily do not communicate with their neighbors or ‘strangers’ will do so during this time. In a sense, many people are given a ‘free pass’ during this phase.

The search-and-rescue period will last at least ‘days’ and could progress into a week. As each day ticks by, the overall security risk drifts higher and the curve begins to steepen.

Awareness and Realization

If the event is bad enough, people will begin to become aware of the circumstances facing them. This realization generally won’t set in for most people until after the initial flurry of activity subsides and their conditions have not improved much, or at all. This is the “Oh $hit” phase, “We might be in for trouble…”. This is the time when more widespread looting will begin.

As overall awareness sets in, people will pull back from helping others as they were doing earlier. They will become more concerned about themselves and their families and will be reluctant to give up what’s theirs. This segment of time may run for another week, maybe two. Security risks will have ramped up dramatically throughout this period of time.

Desperation

After several weeks without services, many people will have run out of food, and even water. Desperate people do things they never would have thought of doing and this is the timeline segment of absolute highest security risk. Most stores will have been or will be in the final stages of looting, and supplies will be mostly gone and unavailable. People will not be freely giving up their own anymore, as they will be highly concerned about their own immediate and long term survival.

The desperate period of time could be considerable, depending of course on the severity of the disaster. If long enough, people will begin to lose their lives in a number of different ways from dehydration, malnutrition, to violence, or infection and disease.

Restructuring

It is natural for humans to form hierarchies, to organize, to structure themselves within groups. It’s natural because over the long run we need the skills of others to more efficiently survive.

During this timeline segment, the security risks will be generally falling due to the fact that those who have survived will be falling into more-or-less self sufficient groups or will have joined forces to protect their own communities.

What to do with this knowledge?
So, having estimated and defined these segments of time following a disaster, what can we do with the information? How will it help us ahead of time?

It is very clear to me that you need to recognize the severity of a given disaster as soon as possible. If the disaster is estimated to be severe (regional/national), then you will have one week or less to make any serious moves or adjustments. After that, you will be facing high risk while out in public or while attempting to mobilize.

It tells me that quickly gathering information about the disaster is paramount to successfully being ahead of the Sheeple. For me, that means securing ahead of time a decent portable battery operated Shortwave Radio (with AM bands) to hear news and information broadcast from afar. In addition, it means having the mechanism to charge your batteries (solar charger and spare rechargeable batteries). Information is knowledge and power.

Once the severity is known, and ‘if’ you need to bug-out, then you best well do it within the first few days before realization and desperation sets in. It will be very difficult to move around without ambush during those phases.

Although you should have had your preparedness supplies well stocked before the disaster, you should use the first few days to ‘top off’ your tanks, so to speak.

Plan ahead for the end of the realization segment and beginning of the desperation segment, when people will be out to get what they desperately need. This is when your life will be in the greatest danger and you must be laying low, out of sight – out of mind. A well thought out and preplanned diversification plan for your food storage and other supplies will pay off during this time. Plan to ‘fit in’ with the desperate, should you be confronted. Remember to NOT put all your eggs in one basket.

Hopefully the notion of a security timeline will encourage you to think about what could happen, and to plan ahead accordingly. Let’s hope for the best and plan for the worst!

Incidentally, a good book on the subject, one which gave me the idea for this post,
Holding Your Ground: Preparing for Defense if it All Falls Apart.

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Diversion Safe

A diversion safe can be a safe that is hiding in plain sight. It looks so much like something other than a safe, that a burglar or intruder will not think twice about checking it out for valuables.

A diversion safe should never take the place of a real safe for your ultimate valuables, because most diversion safe’s are not in themselves very secure, and most are not fireproof, compared to the real thing. However they do provide an alternative for hiding things in your home, and they are very effective as ‘hiding in plain sight’.

Many of them are pretty inexpensive and it may be worth it for you to pick up one, or a few, for things like hiding keys, extra cash, jewelry,  coins, etc…

The following short video shows one of the diversion safe’s that I have, and is perfect in a prepper’s pantry!

Del Monte Can Diversion Safe
Unless the burglar is craving Fruit Cocktail, this food can is a great diversion.

Barbasol Can Diversion Safe
How about an ordinary can of shaving cream on your bathroom shelf?

Ajax Can Diversion Safe
Fits right in, sitting with the other cleaners under the kitchen sink.

Dr Pepper Can Diversion Safe
An innocent looking can of soda makes for a good diversion safe.

Home Dictionary Book Diversion Safe
The classic safe in a book…

WD-40 Can Diversion Safe
How about hiding in a can of WD-40 in the garage? Who would’ve thought?

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