Post-SHTF Local Circle Around Your Home

This is another food-for-thought exercise. It has to do with Level 4 Preparedness and a scenario (pick your own hypothetical) which results in true SHTF survival. A time when your world will become very local. At least until rebuilding on the ‘other side’.

For those who have downloaded ‘Google Earth’ (mapping software), first select your home address. Then choose the ruler tool. It has a circle option. Expand a circle around your home. Set it for a 1 mile radius (2 mile diameter). Have a look inside that circle. You might say that this will be your immediate world after SHTF.

Obviously you could choose any diameter. A half mile radius for a 1 mile circle, or several miles…whatever. But a 1 mile radius seems reasonable enough to get the point across. Your post-SHTF living will be in proximity with these people.

Do you know any of them? Do you know what they do? Are any of them assets to the situation?

While using Google Earth, it’s quite easy to zoom in on these locations. It will provide insight. For example it may reveal farming (big or small). Water sources. Congestion. Routes of travel. Those with more land than others. What’s in people’s yards. Buildings. All sorts of observations. It will also provide a pretty good representation of your local population density – which may surprise you…

Why It All Becomes Local After SHTF

I’ve defined Level 4 preparedness as ‘self-sustaining’. Maintaining or able to maintain oneself or household by independent efforts, best coupled within a like minded self–sustaining community. A time when there’s little or no external inputs from far away (e.g. today’s modern long distance distribution channels).

When thrust into a widespread long term SHTF, you might say that what you have will be all there is for awhile. Maybe a long while. However one’s local community may be able to come together to some extent to mitigate this. Although the level of cooperation may be uncertain at best – given human nature (this will highly depend on where you live and your local relationships).

No more long distance trucking (or any at all). No more grocery stores. Operational gas stations. All the things right out of a SHTF survival novel…

Your Local Circle

The average walking speed is about 3 mph or a tad less. A person a mile away from you could walk there in about 20 minutes. Most reasonable healthy people could walk farther than that too – though most people these days do not seem to be reasonably healthy, so who knows…

Those unprepared for Level 3 or 4 preparedness will begin walking in search of what they need. And most everyone is not prepared for this level of SHTF. So these people in your local perimeter will be who you may have to deal with. Plan for that however you may.

The time to establish neighborly / community connections (with those who would be like-minded assets) was yesterday. But it’s never too late. It’s going to take some level of cooperation within your local circle in order to get through the timeline.

The issues of concern will begin with the very basics. Security. Water. Food. Shelter. Then, the sustainability part. Without channels of distribution, the community will need to produce more food. How’s that going to happen? Farming. Gardening. Livestock. And all that goes along with making that happen.

The big problem with the hypothetical of long term SHTF survival is this… If it’s that bad, this means that the nation has essentially fallen. When there’s a power vacuum, something will rush in to fill it. Will that be another invading country? Regional warlords? Remember the TV series The Walking Dead?

Anyway, it’s more food for thought. If and when it happens, it will no longer matter to you what’s happening anywhere except where you live. Think about that.

[ Read: Timeline Of Events Following A Long Term Grid Down Catastrophe ]

[ Read: Without Rule of Law ]