Friend Or Foe?

Ok everyone, SHTF and your hunkered down in your house with your family. Everything you prepared for is happeneing. There is a family outside (Father, Mother and 2 kids). They were not prepared. They have no food, tools, shelter etc...
Do you help them out? Let them shack with you for a night or 2? Do you give them a few supplies and send them on their way? Or too bad for them they should have prepared, every thing you give to them is taking away from your family?

 

Did I know them before the SHTF?

That has to be the big question. If I did know them...and they (dad) wasn't an asshole, then there is a chance that I would give them a "care package" and send them on their way, but the reality is in the moment, I would probably not.

 

Camouflage isn't necessarily to do with painting everything green, sometimes it is necessary to appear to be in the same situation as everyone else. If you stand out as looking cleaner or better fed then others around you it won't go unnoticed. If you have heat or power when they have none you can expect jealousy so don't let on.
If you help someone out with a care package you'd better not expect gratitude, just expect demands for more because "they need it, you should give it to them".

It might be wiser not to share but instead help others learn to help themselves if you get caught up in a long term event (apocalyptic)...however in a short term, transient event where I could save lives without endangering myself or family I would offer to help.

 

Admittedly, the likelihood of me being in my house is slim. If the "stuff" hits the fan, I'm outa Dodge! I'd rather take my chances in the wilderness. I feel it would be safe than staying stuck in civilization where you could be found and raided and where disease might spread rampantly. Perhaps that's just me.

If, theoretically, I were stuck in a building, I wouldn't answer the door. Simply put, I don't trust strangers when there's danger all around.

Besides, the family should have prepped. I'm not going to starve to feed someone else.

 

People are one of the biggest unpredictable elements in a survival situation.
There are so many things to take in to account.
How long has it been since the situation (end of the world trigger) happened this can help measure how desperate people are.
As well as family, the season, weather or not you knew them beforehand.
But I think unless you are prepared to incorporate these people in to your survival plan giving them task to contribute to both yours and there survival showing that you have extra supplies is like putting a target on you and anyone with you.
I'm all for helping people but never trust someone will be reasonable when the chips are down. Learned that first hand.

 

It would largely depend on how much food and supplies I have on hand. But I know in an absolute mother of all SHTF scenarios it be every man for himself, and with that is a real life and death struggle not only on the feeding yourself, but warding off the desperate and absolute crazed populace. So you have to have the mental fitness to have no shame, no mercy and fend for yourself. If you start handing out food and and what have you all over then more will likely come, albeit they probably already know someone lives there and has food and supplies. So that's where you break out the guns, turn one into a dead warning sign on your front step as to show what WILL happen to you if you enter here.

It's a rough ride and if you're gonna survive you need to stay disciplined and keep a certain mental state and sternness. Kids or not. Chances are they'll die from some other deranged desperate people looking for the same thing in quick order sooner or latter.

Lets just all hope a major SHTF scenario never comes to flourishion. And yet people in this day and age act like they'd like to see an actual "zombie apocalypse." They've watched too many TV shows and movies. The reality of it all is very dark, sad, emotional and scary. And I often think about if and when that day should come.

The old rule of nature applies. The fittest will survive.

 

This I not intended to have a go at you SimPilot but there is a current trend on this forum to say things like "turn one into a dead warning sign" or putting "heads on stakes".
It's as if you guys have never heard of flies or botulism. You will be healthier and live longer if you can get rid of any dead bodies near your homes as quickly as you can before they spread disease, contaminate your soil or poison your ground water.

 

I know it was a digression but I was directly quoting from SimPilot's recent post and I was attempting to address an issue that seems to be cropping up quite often.

 

Yes but even a small number of corpses laying around will attract flies and spread a variety of diseases. Leaving them on view as a warning sign to outsiders may just be like shitting on your own doorstep.

 

Charity begins at home. Most of the people that I KNOW are at the very least minimally prepared with one exception. That exception is next door to me and I will happily let him starve now that his kids are grown and gone. He is a user and always has been. Strangers won't receive a real happy welcome. Signs that say "NO TRESPASSING!! Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again" should get the point across. At first there will be swarms of refugees that will take everything that you have if you let them whether it be by theft or by begging.

 

I have no issue with anyone defending themselves against looters, especially after giving fair warning or posting signs. I was simply pointing out that you need to shovel them up afterwards and dispose of them neatly before they start to smell.
I liked the mine shaft solution best.

 

There is a HUGE advantage to living where we live, in a very small town. Everybody knows everybody. We know who the good people are, and we know who the trash are. Everybody knows everything.

In the situation described, we would deal with it as a community, we are small enough that we are basically one big extended family. People wouldn't just be "wondering lost up and down our streets", no matter how bad things were.

We live where city people's food comes from. We have more food in our grain elevators than we could possibly eat. Our area produces enough cattle to feed 100,000 people and there are less than 4,000 people in our county. This is a big deal.

The decisions we are forced into making "if the SHTF" are influenced by our choices today.

 

I don't think that people that have lived their entire life in larger cities and towns can really understand the difference in the culture of a small town and a big city. Small towns used to be more like clans than they are now. Too many small towns have been taken over as "bedroom" communities for people that worked in the bigger cities. Where I live now it isn't unusual for people to drive 40 to 60 miles each way to and from work. This sort of thing is changing the small town feeling that it used to have.

It used to be that every 15 or 25 miles you would have another small town. It was almost totally self contained with its own schools stores, industries and identity. The people in that town were close and often related one way or another through marriages. That is dying out now as are the neighborhoods that used to be the bigger city version of this.

 

I live in a small town (less than 2000 people) that's basically remained the same for the last 30 years. My county's population is growing not because of industrial development but rather because Amish and Mennonite families tend to have 6-10 kids.

In my state, Missouri, yes, there have been a lot of small communities eaten by St. Louis, Kansas City & Springfield, but there's still a lot of towns that have changed very little... you just have to get off the interstates and onto the blue roads to find them.

I live here because I like clean air, it's safe, and it's free. If I want to strap on a 6-shooter and go to the grocery store, nobody's even going to give me a second look. We have rifles in racks in our pickup-truck's back windows. We go to church, most of the community will be at the football games on Friday night (whether they have kids involved or not).

We are an agricultural community. We are exporters, not importers. We grow things for city people to consume. We are where the food comes from, and where vast amounts of grain are stored (to feed livestock that we grow). We are where the orchards are. We grow grapes for the wineries. We are where there's enough cattle to feed 40 times the number of people that we have.

We don't have movie theaters, there are just 2 places in town (not counting spinning meat at our 2 C-stores) to eat. We have agricultural jobs, we have a bunch of people who do metal and wood fabrication and who sell their products nationally. There is work here, it's just not office 9-5 in most cases.

My point? Thousands upon thousands of towns just like us, many a little bigger (5000 or less) and some a little smaller (1,000) are out there. By and large, if/when the stuff hits the fan (SHTF) these towns are going to be a whole lot better place to live than any suburb or city.

 

I live in the suburbs of a town with a population of 500 scattered out all over the place. We have two convenience stores with gas, one country meat market and grocery store , one dry goods store, two restaurants, a bank, a post office and a medical clinic. I can basically get by with just what we have here if I had to. Our convenience stores are not like a city store. They sell deer corn, fishing tackle, bait, a little ammo, food, gas, oil and other fluids for your car, medicines, drinks, cigarettes, beer, wine, lottery tickets and a few groceries. The meat market cures their own hams, makes bacon, sausage and also butchers livestock (Pigs, goats and calves) and deer. They also have a little sort of farmers market type produce counter where they sell locally grown produce at great prices.

In the event of a long term problem we will have all the food we can eat as long as we can protect it. There are pigs, cattle, goats, chickens and horses all over the place and then there are thousands of wild hogs. deer, a few turkeys and lots of ponds, lakes, creeks and the river full of fish. Most of the people here garden but it isn't a farming area. We also have more trained people that are used to dealing with problem people than most places because of the prisons. In the event of a disaster the lowest level of inmates will probably be freed eventually but the max security prisoners will die there. The inmates won't be a problem. They will want to get out of this area as fast as they can. In an emergency the guards are deputized and that along with the national guard place here will make this a BAD place for trouble makers.

 

I believe that could be the best option.
You can gauge there intentions build trust and even start to build a community if needed.
And if it turns out that it won't work you'll know if they pose a threat and how.
All for helping people but being careless with ones own safety defeats the point.

 

Those are the signs which will immediately replace the regular NO TRESPASSING signs that are on EVERY fence post that surrounds my property. If it isn't clear enough...then I can't help stupidity. My hundred acres are MINE. No mortgage, no obligation to anyone other than the tax man every quarter...and if TSHTF, then the tax man can also kiss my tooshy.

I have thought about this more and more as yet ANOTHER southern Arizona rancher was assaulted and robbed on HIS land by so-called refugees from the Turd World Shitholes to our south who are merely "dreamers" and "seeking a better life" and "hard workers here to do the jobs Americans don't want".

If you should happen to stumble onto my home...miles outside of our tiny little town...then it would do you (speaking editorially) wise to heed the warning. It is pretty clear. There is no equivocation or lack of specificity.

Of course the "nuh uh" and "I am entitled" generation won't think that it could possibly mean them too...but it will most especially mean them. Cross my property line in a SHTF/WROL situation...and find your heads on stakes.

If you're smart enough to ring the wrought iron bell on the gate...you MAY...depending on the look of you...get some aid or comfort. But to ignore the sign and cross uninvited is to invite an immediate executive response.

So, the Friend or Foe question is irrelevant. If you cross my property lines, ignoring the clear warning...then you have inasmuch made the statement that you are a foe.

 

Why would it concern you anyway? You'll just deny it anyway. Coward.

 

I agree.

 

Dead body isn't going to poison ground water. If that were true we wouldn't bury the dead. And I'm not about to keep a dead body near the door way. LOL

 

Mass bomb fires if you ask me.

 

I used to live i no man's land North Dakota. You more than likely could survive there. That's a good point about the grain elevators. There's a shit ton everywhere out there. Don't know if they are full all year long though or only during harvest time.

 

bomb fires???

Watcherchris

 

That's true anything decomposing can cause serious health issues if left unchecked even if Buried.

 

Absolutely wrong, there are laws against human buriel taking place near a potable water source or a water course for good reason, cholera and botulism can leave persistent spores in soil for remarkably long periods. It's why graves are at least 6 feet down and their position recorded. Flies are a vector for all manner of disease, there is no sensible reason to encourage them.

 

Signs of any kind get ignored, I have several posted around the perimeter of my land, it is impossible to accidentally stray onto my property without crossing a barbed wire stock fence or passing a discrete sign. I already lock all the gates (except one route in for deliveries) as an additional hint that trespassers are unwelcome.......yet every once in a while some stranger with a sense of self entitlement turns up with what they think is a good excuse to be on my land.
Unfortunately some years back there was a badly drafted piece of legislation in the UK commonly called "right to roam" that opens up access for the general public onto unimproved land such as moorland or mountains. The problem is that it gets abused. There is similar legislation called allemannsret (or something like that) across Northern Europe, great if you're into wild camping or bushcraft but total crap if you're a landowner.

 

Dog walkers, runners, pikies, poachers, hippy mushroom pickers, hot air balloonists, hikers, campers, perverts, doggers and suspicious buggers in long raincoats, Sometimes mountain rescue or even air ambulance drop by looking for bewildered idiots (but they're just doing a job so I don't mind them so much)
As soon as you put up a private no entry sign the whole world beats a path to your door. We don't get many LDS's or JW's these days...I think they've given up on saving my soul for now.

 

Before modern burials, man kind buried their dead all over the place. No harm no foul. You can go to may old cemeteries from the 1800's and read the graves.

No, I'm not saying most of these graves are near a god damn river!

 

Well how be damned. I guess it's bonfire... which means it's for pot heads. LMAO!