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Survival Retreat vs. Neighborhood Survival, by Dr. Richard
Earlier this month, I posted Etienne's guest post Seeking/Starting
a Survival Retreat in Virginia / Maryland / Pennsylvania / West Virginia.
Today, I had lunch with Etienne
de la Boetie and another prepper here in Loudoun County [, Virginia].
We had a long discussion about survival retreats vs neighborhood survival.
Etienne is a big fan of the survival retreat concept. He previously had a
retreat where he did not own the land but where he was able to store a travel
trailer recreational vehicle in which he pre-positioned various preps and
supplies. Unfortunately, his friend moved and sold the property. There are
four major flaws in the survival retreat separate from your home concept:
- There are significant liabilities and social problems with communal retreats
where one does not own the property - you are vulnerable to the actions of
the others, particularly the property owner.
- Property left at unattended retreats is vulnerable to theft and vandalism.
This is going to be a growing problem as the economic depression gets worse,
especially if we have economic collapse.
- Getting to the retreat would be problematic in the event that it is
actually needed - particularly in martial law scenarios where the military
and law
enforcement block traffic at key intersections or in cases where there are
fuel shortages.
- Relatively undeveloped retreats with a trailer and undeveloped
land may not be sufficiently developed for long-term survival and offer insufficient
space
for storage of the various preps and other items you need. Many of these
items would likely be at your day-to-day residence and you cannot assume
that you
can transport everything at the last minute.
My view is that survival retreats only work if you live there full-time. Furthermore,
although remote locations are further removed from the masses, they are also
further removed from jobs, markets, customers, hospitals, and many other useful
infrastructure and will be harder pressed to gather a sufficiently large group
to cover all of the tasks needed in a true long-term survival scenario. Even
the best special forces operator cannot defend his property 24 hours a day,
seven days a week. Unfortunately, we are rapidly running out of time and it
is probably already too late to relocate - especially if relocating means trying
to sell your existing home in this real estate environment -- in my neighborhood
we haven't had a sale in over eight months and anyone who bought in the last
four years and did the traditional 20% down payment fixed 30 year mortgage
now has negative equity.
I am a big proponent of the concept that your family, friends, neighbors, and
church are your survival group. Yes, I understand that many are unprepared
and clueless about both the threats and what they need to do to prepare for
them. However, your home is your survival retreat. Strengthen it to the extent
you can, but your odds improve exponentially if you can organize your neighborhood
and help everyone survive against the threat(s) you are facing in your survival
situation. You and those in the group who are better prepared or who have the
right skills are the cadre needed to get organized and do what is needed. The
rest of the neighborhood are your foot soldiers and do'ers. My philosophy is
to lead and organize but that charity starts with those who are willing to
help themselves and help the group in the survival situation. In a survival
situation, your first challenges are to assess the hazards/priorities/immediate
needs, organize the group, secure the neighborhood, and scrounge/barter/trade
for needed resources.
Be a leader. There are many things you can do to help develop your neighborhood
group of family, friends, neighbors, and fellow church members and increase
the odds of the neighborhood surviving:
- Get to know them.
- Have potluck dinners.
- Help them wake up and prepare.
- Start a garden club to help start victory
gardens.
- Start a community watch program for your neighborhood.
- Give them a copy
of Chris Martenson's
Crash Course on the economy DVD. I bought a case of
30 and gave them as 2008 Christmas gifts.
- Give copies of Holly Deyo's book
Dare to Prepare as gifts. I bought a case of 8 and gave them as 2008 Christmas
gifts to family and several neighbors
who got it and were starting to prep.
- Store extra preps for charity and be
prepared to give when it is needed for survival.
- Learn about their skills,
backgrounds, and interests - on my street we have a former Navy Corpsman/LEO/M16
Instructor/master scrounger/contractor/award
winning barbeque chef who "gets it" and is starting to prepare, two nurses,
a master gardener, an agricultural engineer / head of the 800-home neighborhood HOA,
a Mormon family that does food storage, and six members of the neighborhood
garden club run by our master gardener.
- Buy tools that would be useful that
could be shared like tillers.
- Buy extra seed such as a seven year supply of Survival
Seeds and be prepared to provide seeds for neighbors
- Build a survival library
of books and skills that you can use to train them when they need survival
skills.
- Buy several extra surplus rifles such as the Russian Mosin-Nagant
or SKS rifles and stock extra ammunition to equip your "community watch" patrols.
- Invite
them to go to a shooting range with you.
- Be prepared to give honest evaluations
of whether individuals should relocate once a survival situation begins
to relative's homes or even public shelters
if that is the best option for them.
You will be pleasantly surprised how many of your family, friends, neighbors,
and fellow church members that are starting to wake up and realize the reality
and danger of our current position. This number is increasing every week. Don't
simply assume that they are all clueless sheep - many simply need some education
and a leader to show them the way.
