How will you hide yourself?

[Timelord]

During the 1990's Yugoslavian/Balkans war, the state of the buildings in the war ravaged cities was dire. Earlier in the conflict, many of the suburbs were still intact. 6 months later UN personnel would often find whole suburbs just blackened shells. Not shell damage - just ethnic cleansing or forced to move out and the buildings torched. While in the UK we might not expect a war, the scenario of whole neighbourhoods being ravaged or systematically or accidentally burnt out is a real threat. Whether the domestic dwellings in the Yugoslav wars were in the centre or outskirts of cities, the spread of dereliction and disrepair of dwellings continued until most places in the city area were affected. This could easily have a parallel in a UK alternative scenario. No water, no food, no fuel or heating. The situation was dire. There was always the danger of neighbours "ratting" on each other to whoever was viewed as the local authority about perceived actions or motives of their neighbours in an effort to gain favour themselves. Some neighbours helped each other but ones own family over rode everything and beyond that personal survival was a strong basic emotion.
As for people sticking together, well what do you think the UN loadmasters in the back of the C130 transport aircraft would have thought if they had realised that the food aid they were deploying at night by parachute over the countryside surrounding these war torn cities, was being fought over in the fields below by the civilians of the cities and the various armed factions roaming their respective zones. The civilians could be seen coming onto the streets at dusk and traipsing along the roads out of the city wrapped in large winter coats, men and women alike. Concealed underneath their coats were knives, hatchets, cleavers - anything they could get their hands on to carry underneath. Once out in the fields at night, some of these self same citizens who inhabited the city by night were hacking each other apart in the fields below the overflying C130's in their quest to find and obtain food for themselves and their families to survive a few nights more. It was horrific and there were reliable eyewitness accounts within UN forces stationed there at the time. The civilians not only had to compete with each other, but also the armed military factions looking for the same supplies and they were often traversing terrain that had been land mined - unbeknown to them?. Such actions vividly show the powerful Human survival instinct, the competing motives on an individual and at group level and also the effects of a society in accelerated breakdown.
I absolutely recommend "The Trusted Mole" by Milos Stankovic. A British Para working as a "Liason Officer" for the British UN general in the Bosnian wars. There is some very useful info within the book for preppers that is hard to find elsewhere. Regards, TL.