What have done towards your prep?

[Mortblanc]

Pete,

as Mary has pointed out the very act of shaping thought and guiding a group to consensus IS leadership.

If a group does not take your advice they will take advice from someone else who appears to have more insight and more training, or the loudest most aggressive person present. That does not mean they will follow the "best" person in the group unless the "best" person makes himself available to lead.

And be assured that someone will step forward, perhaps someone with no training who has only their own best interests in mind. That person might even shrug their shoulders, say "each man for himself" and return to their home to watch as the neighborhood is systematically disassembled.

When I lived in the suburbs I knew my neighbors. My wife had lived in our house for 10 years before we married and the neighbors were all long term residents. I met them. I spoke to them almost daily. I mowed their gardens when they were sick and their kids mowed mine after I have my heart attack.

We stood outside and discussed the weather, drainage problems, trees that needed trimming to prevent road blockage and discussed their kids grades in school as well as the work ad career plans of each individual.

I made preppers of them. As storms and severe weather came through each crisis was met as a group effort and advice was passed around. I was the one that showed the IT guy across the street that he could run a couple of lights off the inverter built into his Mercedes, kept the neighbors deep freeze cooled by sharing my generator and promoted a neighborhood cookout to salvage as much refrigerator contents as possible by grilling and eating it all. That was one fine "hurricane party"!

By the time I moved from that house most of the neighbors had gen-sets large and small, adequate food stores and means of organization for any event that might happen. It was a tight knit community with its own separate identity within a larger community.

I have attempted to act the same way here in the rural area I now inhabit. Except here the people are more self reliant from the start. That simply goes along with rural life here, as well as expected friendliness, hand waves and head bobs to everyone, even if they are not your favorite people.

With intrusions into residential neighborhoods the looters generally probe the outer boundaries. Over here that tends to be incursions of automobiles loaded with looters driving into the neighborhoods specifically looking for unprotected homes or those apparently evacuation vacated by now refugee families.

Yes the authorities try to block off and guard the neighborhoods but they can not be everywhere and our police are not mandated as a "protection force" but as law enforcement agents who interdict criminals engaged in illegal behaviors. During riots or crisis they are often thinly distributed and very "busy", and more and more the police themselves are the target of the mob.

It is still the responsibility of the individual to provide for his own safety.

This is the reason one hears so much about people over here not leaving their homes during "mandatory evacuations". They are not avoiding the shelters as much as they are intent on guarding their property.

Yes, they make a show of force. Often that show of force is their presence on the property. At other times it is the presence of groups obviously alert and standing sentry. In most cases over here that line of alert sentries, sometimes armed, is usually the thing that promotes that clear line of demarcation between looted and left intact.

Weapons are not always visible, but over here there is always the threat of their presence in the back of the looters minds. If there are 10 home owners present there are probably 8/10/12 firearms standing behind the chairs, door frames, or under their shirt tails.

During Hurricane Katrina TPTB attempted to confiscate the firearms of the residents and drew immediate attention from the public. Our Supreme Court upheld the right of the home owner to offer armed resistance to protect their lives and homes and mandated that TPTB had no right to confiscate firearms from private homes. The Governor of Puerto Rico attempted the same action last summer during their hurricane and drew immediate national outrage even before the storm had arrived.

Over there I assume that you would be restricted to gathering larger numbers of people and presenting torches and garden implements while hoping the looters were no better armed than you.

Still, consider that looters are not an organized force. They do not have a chain of command and each person is his/her own commander, quartermaster and medical team. They do not have reinforcements under unified command or provisions for court marshal if they do not show courage under fire.

You stomp a couple of butts and break an arm or two and they will not go get others to help, as everyone seems to think. It does not work that way. There is no help to go get.

They will spread word that the group on such-and-such street is not to be messed with!