How To Divert The Unprepared From Your Preps

Guest post: by ‘Be informed’

Most people are probably going to be much better off after a society crushing event to be located away from highly densely populated centers. Unfortunately the majority of everyone lives in suburbia or in urban areas, and the problems of total or near breakdown of civilization are usually magnified there. Even in rural areas the anguish of collapse will be apparent and a problem. For those that failed to plan and put away what they need, their main issue is going to be food, clean water, and their everyday needs. For those that have prepared and sacrificed to be ready, “just in case”, their main problem is keeping what they have.

The prepper and survival driven person needs solutions to be able to better handle the fact that people are going to be coming for what they have in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Some people will turn their homes into forts, and battle to the end before anyone takes what they have saved up. For these people there are plenty of survival military manuals and training that go into great detail how to defend your home from booby trapping everything to every weapon you can imagine. For the person that has stored up and wants to survive as long as possible there are some less drastic measures (solutions). It should be remembered though, everyone should have some form of reliable self defense.

First and foremost what you have is your LIFELINE, it may be all that you have to work with for an indefinite amount of time. Sharing with those who are unprepared could cost you your chance of making it. You cannot feed everyone. There are precautions you can take beforehand to make your stocks safer. There are viable solutions that can be taken to try to avoid dangerous confrontations. There are things you can do to bypass hurt feelings with those you share a community with so as not to come back to haunt you if there is a recovery of the society.

Pre-planning and securing food and supplies.

- Find good hiding places for everything. A storm cellar is wonderful because it is buried, can be concealed, a place for personal safety, and it is cool and if properly insulted frost free for supplies. If moisture is a problem, keeping everything in plastic air tight boxes should solve this. Other hiding places include in the attic under insulation, inside walls, crawlspaces, anywhere you can hide your supplies, as you know your house best.

- Many people will stack food and other items in plain view of all to see, a simple window covering in a store room will not let people see in to what you have.

- If you can afford it, get enough plywood and screws for every window in the house. After a disaster your windows are vulnerabilities that can be shot out or broken for many reasons. Without windows you are at the mercy of the weather elements, harmful insects and animals, people having an easier time of getting in, and you become more visible.

- Don’t let anyone you don’t trust know what you are doing beforehand. Find reliable people you can count on and add them to your group. Safety in numbers.

Some suggestions for helping to keep people away after a cataclysm.

- On top of not being visible to others, keep your home as void of light during the nighttime as possible. Try to keep your home as blending in with the darkness as you can. People can see the dimmest light for miles.

- Be aware of the smell of food. Aromas of cooking food can be smelled for long distances, especially meats.

- Bury all your trash. This keeps disease down, and does not let desperate people know you have been eating food that there is probably more of.

- Make the outside of your place look more rundown and less appealing. Like during regular times the homes that look like they have nothing, are less likely to be ransacked. It doesn’t take much to quickly make a house look worse than it actually is.

- Avoid movements and noise. Where there are people there is food, and things that others need.

- A clever tactic that can work to keep others away is to spray paint in big red letters “QUARANTINED” across your home, even add “DANGER VERY SICK PEOPLE”. Most people don’t want to add to their misery being deathly sick or eating food contaminated by someone with a deadly disease.

When people come knocking at your door,

You can of course confront people with force, but doing this can send out a message you have something well worth fighting for and end up in a fierce battle being outgunned. It may be the only way, but there can be alternatives to this.

- Try never to allow people in your home, but if it happens, have clutter and unkempt surroundings to keep their focus on. Like the outside of your home, look like you have nothing.

- Physically look shabby and depressed like you have nothing.

- Admit to nothing you have stored, even like saying the mistake of saying you ONLY have 2 weeks of food. People will want you to share even this with them.

- Discussion about what you have, should include key words like; meager, little, very limited, bare, empty, sparse, etc.

- If you just have to give away some food, make it seem like it’s a huge sacrifice to do so. Less likely for someone to think you have much more.

- Give away food first to those with children as this makes you appear like you are doing what you can.

- Be ready for any excuse for someone to try to get into your home to see what you have.

- Never talk to a large crowd of people, mob mentality rules and you will find this out.

- Have only one person be the spokesperson for your group. One person is less likely to make a mistake than several that could let out what you have.

- Watch people’s eyes closely when talking to them, beware of the “sizing it up” wandering eyes. Never look away. Watch the body language.

- Remain calm and say what you mean and don’t change your mind, this doesn’t open up for all sorts of manipulation of people trying to get you to feed everyone till you have nothing.

- Don’t let others make you feel bad about sitting on your hoard while they suffer. Convince them that you wish you had food to feed everyone but you don’t. Even make it believable that you are worse off then those coming to your door. Sickness is again something to play on, people are ill inside.

- Get a person’s thought sidetracked what you “might” have, to what the person or people are going to do, ask them about their plans for the future.

- Without discriminating, the more overweight someone is the more desperate they are going to be to eat, the more likely that they are not going to take no for an answer. The more likely they are going to hound you or do something drastic to get any food that may be around.

- To try to predict how people will react, picture yourself in their situation and ask yourself what you would do.

This gives you a foundation to think about and plan for if and when people come to your door wanting what you might have.

- Have a collection of native plants, such as dandelions, that are eatable and discuss with your neighbors that this is what you have been living on and they can also find this around the city. This should curb their interest that you have much or any stored up food for them.

This is a set of ideas that can help you keep a hold of what you have to survive, those things that you have saved up for and sacrificed for to be prepared. It must be realized by most of us that we all have a degree of warmth and compassion for those hungry and desperate, it is called humanity. The problem with this is that you cannot support and keep everyone alive and thriving unless you are a multimillionaire and have all sorts of stored food and supplies and other means of manufacturing food and needs.

You can attempt to feed and supply everyone that you can, and end up with nothing, and in the same sinking boat as everyone else. You also can decide to keep what you have prepared for and try to survive for your family’s and group’s sake, and attempt to keep what you have by using these methods or other inventive and creative ways of avoiding “giving or having the shirt taken off your back”.

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