Quote of the Day
If you survive the blast, and you survive the fallout, you’re going to have to survive the constant threat of mass home invasion from those whose disaster planning is just 3 days.
Tirno
December 19, 2024
Comment to Evidence of the Idiocracy
This is an excellent point. But once made, you realize there are going to be some exceptions. Maintain a large buffer zone between yourself and the hordes with poor planning. Doing this can minimize your risk of contact. The risk can be driven to almost zero.
Let time, distance, and others “thin the herd” before the Seattle hordes reach your underground bunker in Montana. Give yourself some good alarms and a thousand yards of open space in every direction. Then, with the right guns, ammo, optics, and shooting partners, you should not have a problem against the low life.
Of course, this is far easier said than done.
If we are talking nuclear war, most of the horde will be DRT. The rest will be killed by fallout while trying to relocate. Economic and political collapse is trickier but the horde won’t come in a single wave. Trick is to survive the first wave and get your neighbors organized for later waves. The first wave will get attention and make this easier. At that point it is a race for organization between the hordes and the defenders.
A 1000 yard sightline in every direction requires 10-12 people to guard, and night vision for 4 to 6 of those. By the time the supposed survivors arrive, they will have months of battlefield experience and will be working together — the dumb ones will be dead.
A better plan involves developing a community with good neighbors and good communication for mutual defense.
Once the masses realize the cordwood stacked haphazardly along your property lines isn’t cordwood-you might be able to relax a little and get a few hours sleep at night.
That’s when you bring back the old tradition of mounting the heads of would-be looters on pikes at the edge of the area you control- as a warning that you are not to be trifled with, lest their own heads be added to the signposts.
My ex did that with ants that were harassing the baby. Hard to cut their heads off so she just did a ring of bodies. It worked.
Desperate people will be a problem. And a study of Selco, who lived through the whole Sarajevo, Bosnian/Serbian collapse talked about gang dynamics. How they start out small. But after a while of killing off the smaller gangs, leads to big gangs.
And having stolen everything from everyone else. Your all that’s left.
How people you have traded with and know. Run out of everything. Call for a trade just to trick you into an ambush.
It can and will get ugly for survivors. And there will be a lot of them.
The medieval European village model with an American twist will be what emerges.
Small groups of people banned together in the center of their farmlands will be the most defensible.
With mutual aid agreement to other villages should gangs be spotted moving through/toward certain areas. But nothing will be easy.
To me the real threat is flying over NJ right now. Drones controlled by government or other bad actors can be used not only for ISR, but in a myriad of ways to disrupt anyone trying to be civilized.
Till those go off the table. Plan on looking like “nothing to see there, boss.”
Communications are always going to be the hard spot. But can be as simple as a flashlights and binoculars/spotting scopes.
Line of sight you can talk for miles.
Most of all, were Americans. We don’t just die; we thrive until were dead.
And like the meme said. “Our forefathers didn’t die for our rights. They killed for them.”
Might be our turn to do the same for our children.
The proper takeaway from Selco is get out of the cities. Good advice even if there is no apocalypse.
Ya, and he thanked us Americans for the nightly supply drops.
Which no one is going to be getting in this day and age of SHTF.
To me, the most important is the gang dynamics as human nature says those won’t change much.
Set up a planned defense (as opposed to a hasty defense), as much as you are reasonably able to do at preset.
Use terrain and landscaping to your benefit. For example, a nice 8ft iron fence along your property line or curtalige; and if you have enough room a “Ha-Ha” a hundred feet or so further in. No barrier or obstacle is impenetrable, the objective it to make it difficult to cross and slow them down.
Also be careful not to make or have features that would provide an attacker a good defensive position, or if that can’t be avoided set up some unpleasant surprise for them in it.
If you intend to be able to light up your perimeter at night, use polished metal mirrors to reflect lights that are protected from rocks or gunfire.
Read up on the defenses of Rhodesian Farmers in the 70s and 80’s. They often defended their homes against armed terrorist with only 2 or 3 defenders.
Play dirty. Quoting L.Niven, “A civilization has the ethics it can afford”, and you can’t afford to loose.
As Terry Pratchett noted, a very deep haha is actually a hoho.
Especially when the bad guys fall into it, at least from “our” perspective.
What happens after a nuclear exchange will depend on a lot of factors. How big an exchange/how many warheads. What was targeted. What is the prevailing weather and wind patterns. That’s just for starters. The best one can do is be as far from major targets and major population centers as possible and if possible in a region that is usually not downwind from such places. Beyond that the preps will be similar as for other scenarios with the added burden of worrying about fallout and contamination. The aftermath of a significant nuclear war will be horrific beyond description for almost everyone who survives. And many of them won’t be around 12 months later.
Most of those horrific fallout maps are based on peak Cold War first strike scenarios. First strike means silo busting ground bursts which create huge fallout plumes. City busting is better done with air bursts which produce much less fallout. I think the latter scenario is the more likely one today. Some of the missile silos are empty and the rest are probably launch on warning. Anyway we have enough SLBM to make the rubble bounce. Takes away the incentive to go after the silos even if the capacity exists. Going after the cities might even be irrelevant given some of the estimates about an EMP attack.