Electromagnetic Pulse (25 page)

Hunting- This also goes into the food category of beans, bullets and band-aids. In order to hunt efficiently and effectively, you need to know which hunting weapons to purchase and use. A .22 rifle would be much better for squirrel and varmint hunting than an AR-15. However, a .308 caliber rifle would be more effective for hunting deer or other big game animals. A bow may be better in any situation, as it is silent and will not arouse attention like a gun. Another great idea is the use of traps. These are reusable and are semi-passive ways of finding food. They can also protect your home from intruders. In the forest and plains areas, squirrels, elk, deer, birds, turkeys and water fowl are all great sources of protein.

Finally, a word about
operational security
—
OPSEC
. This brings us to another important axiom of prepping:

Tell No One About Your Preps
!

The prepper’s creed begins:

If you don’t talk, no one will hear and if no one else hears, no one else will know
.

Operational Security, or OPSEC, for Preppers is a discipline, a mindset. It is simply denying an adversary, present or future, vital information that could harm you or benefit them.

Prior to collapse, OPSEC involves curtailing your activities on social media or not bragging about your weapons cache.

As kids, we found comfort in our homes with our families, maybe hiding under the covers or with a favorite blanket. As we’ve grown up, our concerns may focus on job security, financial security and general home security. Now we are big boys and girls—preparing for TEOTWAWKI. Security takes on a whole new meaning when you have to fear armed marauders streaming down your driveway to take your preps, or worse. Your favorite blankie won't help you.

Once there is a life-changing collapse event, you may take comfort in knowing you’re well prepped with all the beans, band-aids, and bullets that a well-prepared family could need. Well, guess what? Your failure to abide by OPSEC guidelines will quickly make you a target. There is a relatively simple SOP—standard operating procedure—for survival groups who’ve advanced to the highest level of preparedness. How can you avoid armed confrontations with the marauders? What should you do prior to the collapse event, in order to keep your preps hidden from the world?

Pre-Collapse: Getting Others to Prep

Getting other people to prep is far easier said than done. If it were easy to convince people to spend their hard-earned money on a possible bad future, then we’d all be prepared and there wouldn't be a fear of looting and raiding. But it isn't easy and those threats are real.

When first talking to someone about prepping, you need to understand your audience. This means that if you’re talking to a hard-core outdoorsman, you can bring up far more
survival-esque
components to prepping, while a friend that is just talking about a natural disaster should be eased into it more.

Secondly, it’s important to focus on the need to prep over the possible reasons. People don’t like thinking about economic collapse or cyber warfare, so instead of hearing you talk about prepping, those people will instead argue the finer points of why those things can’t happen. If you focus on the possibility of something making food, water, or essentials like toilet paper hard to get, it only makes sense to prepare for that possibility. Whatever the case, getting people on board by scaring them doesn't work, but getting them to understand their lives without the essentials, is a sure fire way to get them signed up.

Once you get friends and family on board with prepping for themselves, it’s easier to talk with them and for everyone to help each other. There’s something to be said for acting alone—
the lone wolf prepper
, but a little help will never hurt. If you make the determination to form a group, you can proceed with caution.

Pre-Collapse: Forming a prepper group

As preppers, you face a conundrum. Should you be part of a prepper group or should you be a lone wolf prepper? There are benefits and detriments to both options. Here are some considerations in forming a prepper group.

One of the first things a new prepper typically wants to do is reach out to other like-minded people in their area about prepping and try to form a prepper group. Unless there is an established and open group in the area, it’s often very difficult to form a post-collapse team. Preppers are naturally cautious about discussing prepping with people that they don’t already know. Unless the group is actively looking for new members, you might not even know about a group in your area.

If you are serious about prepping, then you have probably come to the realization that you will not be able to do everything yourself when SHTF. Just the day-to-day chores of collecting firewood, sanitation issues, cooking, food procurement, and cleaning without modern technology, will be overwhelming for a family, but when you have the added issue of providing your own security. You will quickly realize that you’ll need help in maintaining security.

A prepper group is an association of people that have agreed to help each other out after a collapse event. The level of help depends on the scenario, the people involved, and the community. Some prepper groups encompass an entire small town or community. Typically, the residents intend to stay in their own homes, but agree to provide mutual security and aid on a community-wide scale. Because of their size, these types of groups are rare, and formed post-collapse.

The most common type of group is a loosely organized group of people, which may or may not live close to each other, but have general plans to provide mutual aid. They might meet together on a regular basis to discuss different scenarios, take classes together, and combine orders for bulk purchasing. Some are well-organized, while others just pay lip-service to the concept. A prepper group like this might be beneficial during the planning stage, but in an actual event, the distance between them will make mutual aid impossible.

The next prepper group is a collaboration of several like-minded individuals that have made a plan, practiced their plan, and have a mutually agreed upon location to execute that plan as a group. They live fairly close to each other, but instead of trying to stay in their various locations, recognize the importance of being together to provide strength in numbers. This is the best case scenario.

Putting together a prepper group does not mean that you must find a group of survivalists and band together. There are several things that you need to consider when deciding if someone is right for your group. Factors include:

1. What are they prepping for?

2. What skills or supplies do they bring to the table?

3. How many in their group and what is their relationship to each other?

4. How committed are they?

When we look at forming our prepping group, we have to consider if the people are like-minded, their skills, commitment, and who they will bring with them. Later, for recruiting purposes, we also need to consider how many people we will need, to accomplish what needs to be done

Recently, a Prepper in the Tampa, Florida area learned a hard lesson in choosing members for his preppers group. Many of the newest members had prior felonies, which prohibited them from owning or possessing firearms. Further, this Florida prepper engaged in questionable conduct; such as building pipe bombs and making veiled threats against law enforcement. When one of his new members of the group was arrested on unrelated charges, they turned snitch and wore a wire during the prepper’s group meetings. The end result—the leader of the group is going to prison, while the snitch walks free.

The debate will always rage as to whether you should be a member of a preppers group or a lone wolf prepper. Regardless of how you define your prepper group, there are common issues when determining who to let your group. It is a private membership which should always practice OPSEC, due to the sensitive information that everyone in the group has access to. You need to give careful consideration to the people becoming part of your group. In general, this is not an easy topic, as there are no fast and simple rules. The average human being is a complex bag of emotions and logic, to which fields of science have been dedicated to understanding. Therefore, it is not surprising when the person you had thought to be a stable individual, turns out to be not much more than a basket-case.

Consider this. Choosing members of a preppers group is a lot like courting; you cannot really tell if they are right for you from just a few dates. Sure, we've all heard of love at first sight. However, given time, a person's true colors shine through. Being part of a group is not much different. There will be differences, arguments, heated debates, betrayals, and various other emotional conflicts. All of which need to be addressed, particularly, since this group is supposed to be like a second family to you.

One very important aspect to keep in mind is what will happen when someone stops being a group member. Though it may seem like many people would make a good group member, most will turn out to be incompatible with you and your group. Some people are very good at hiding who they really are, even after knowing someone for years. What has the newly-ejected member learned about you, your family, and your preparedness plan? They may get kicked out of the group or they may decide to leave voluntarily. Either way, this person becomes a security risk.

When looking at group preparedness, remember that a long-term crisis scenario will require large amounts of labor for survival. Therefore, unless you are creating a specific paramilitary team, no one should be automatically discounted because of any disabilities or shortcomings (such as having a lack of gear). Look at each prospective member on a case-by-case basis, weighing their strengths and weaknesses, while keeping in mind that everyone has something to contribute. Finding group members is a tedious process, but the gains accomplished by having a group of people you can depend on, are immeasurable.

Your survival may depend on it.

Post-collapse: How to Assimilate with your neighbors to form a group

These are all considerations of OPSEC for preppers that can be implemented prior to the collapse event. After TEOTWAWKI, when other factors like a grid-down scenario come into play, OPSEC becomes less technology oriented.

After collapse, OPSEC will require you to resist the urge to step up and be the new leader of any newly-formed survival group. One of the biggest mistakes preppers can make is to tell the wrong person or people about their preps. While helping people in a time of need, is one of the most selfless things you can do, if you’re the only person prepared in your neighborhood and everyone comes looking to you for help, all of your pre-collapse OPSEC will be wasted, as desperate people attempt to take the things you’ve worked so hard to save. We believe that it is better to be safe, keep our preparedness plans to ourselves, than to be sorry.

While you don’t want to tell the world about your plans, it’s expected that you might want to share with close friends, family, and possibly trusted co-workers. To help you understand who you should tell and who you shouldn’t, we’ve put together a few points.

Complete privacy is nearly impossible to keep, especially when you will surely need help with something at some point. It will be very difficult to survive on your own. The biggest reason to form a survival group, in our opinion, is to maintain security. After a collapse event, your world will become much smaller. Your neighborhood will become your universe. Focus on establishing a group of neighbors first, and then look outward for like-minded thinkers.

The goal is to survive, and if potential looters know what you have, that survival will be a big challenge. Within days if not hours of the collapse event, your neighbors will begin to gather together to seek information. You will have a decision to make. Step up and be the leader of the group, or stand back and observe. We are in favor of continuing your OPSEC practice after collapse, and avoiding a leadership role at first.

Here are the steps we recommend you take after a collapse event:

1.
     
Take a day to gather information and assess the extent of the collapse. Observe your neighbors to gauge their reaction.

2.
     
Maintain a heightened state of awareness. Every action and reaction of your neighbors should be observed, and not dismissed.

3.
     
Be polite to everyone you deal with, but do so with confidence. You do not want to be perceived as weak.

4.
     
Learn about the people around you from reliable sources. Immediately attempt to identify troublemakers.

5.
     
Identify cliques within your neighborhood, and identify individuals or families to approach. You have to establish trust.

6.
     
Initially, don’t worry about ascertaining the level of other people’s preps. Avoid suspicion by not being too inquisitive.

7.
     
If a neighborhood meeting is called, determine who the organizers are. Typically, these individuals will be type A, overbearing temperaments.

8.
     
Don’t make waves. Better to remain quiet, than to argue. Your job is not to take control, or provide information.

9.
     
Conceal your weapons, and do not discuss your preps, EVER.