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Letter Re: The Psychology of Survival in TEOTWAWKI
Sir:
I have been trying to paint mental pictures of men, women, and children
scouring the countryside for food and fuel, arriving/crashing through
the gate to my property, intent on their own survival.
They are hungry, desperate, and in a panic state of mind. I have tried
to picture myself shooting warning shots over their heads, hearing
them scream and curse at me, and hopefully going away.
I have Dakota Alerts in place for early detection during the night.
I had dogs, but they are shot or beaten to death early on in the nightmare
scenario.
But the alarms keep going off, and I know that there is movement on
my property, and they are close at hand. I pour some semi-auto [fire]
out of a window into the darkness to scare them off, and they move
on.
But it continues for weeks. The trucking of supplies to us from Mexico
has taken much too long, as the main highway system is chaos, and the
ports that remain functional have bogged down from a myriad of logistical
problems. Canada is doing what it can for the Northern U.S., but law
and order have vanished in my area.
Then the pounding on the doors begins, and with some shots and threats.
Things have deteriorated to the point to where looters do not care
if they
are killed. They are miserable
and almost dead already. So now the killing begins, and they will certainly
kill me if that is what it takes to get some food and supplies. The Mad
Max movie has begun, but it is not theatrical.
If I am to survive, I must take drastic actions.
The psychology/mindset of survival is something I am coming to grips
with. It is something so foreign to me, having lived in a wonderland
of plenty for so long,
that it is shocking to the senses. It is warfare, but an x-rated dirty
and disgusting picture of humanity at its most primitive. How does
one imagine barbarians crashing down upon a once civilized culture,
reducing the lifestyle to one of filth, starvation, horror, and blood.
A ghastly life of violence and suffering and riot; catastrophic losses
and degradation to the point of madness
and murder. Seeing ones family members huddled together in fear and
weeping. Digging pits for the bodies that were killed during the night,
remembering their screams and moans, knowing
that packs of wild dogs will be trying to dig them up the next night.
I could go on, but won't.
I think we can arm ourselves, and have a quite content attitude about how much
storage food we have. But, there is the emotional aspect of survival that I am
trying to deal with.
Does your book ""Patriots"]
help here? - Martin P.
JWR Replies: Yes, you will find that my novel "Patriots" is
quite helpful in thinking through retreat security and some of the psychological
aspects of TEOTWAWKI.
In
it,
I
describe
some
practical
and
tactical
methods
for
retreat
security in a "worst case". In fact, there are some strategies and tactics presented
in the novel that
I've
never
seen
presented
elsewhere.
In
all
of
my
writings,
I
have stressed
the
importance of
relocating to a lightly-populated region that is well removed from major
metropolitan
regions.
In the event of a full scale societal collapse, the nightmarish circumstances
that
you
describe
will
be
likely
in
the
cities
and in the suburbs, but they are thankfully far, far less likely out
in the hinterboonies. In essence, fewer people means fewer problems.
