by Max Velocity
The reality for many families is that is that they are not set up in a self-sustaining retreat right now. For whatever reason, they may be in an urban or suburban environment. They may have nowhere else to realistically ‘bug out’ to. They may have a goal to achieve the retreat, but not be there yet, or have bug out land that is fairly basic and requires them to move to it following a collapse. So there may be a reality gap between those that have achieved the gold standard of location and preparations, and those that are not there yet.
What we are really concerned about here is a collapse of society, the veritable ‘TEOTWAWKI’, where it all goes to chaos, the ‘SHTF’. Most of us will be left to survive where we are, in our suburban homes or whatever applies to you. Now, it is true that some will be better set up than others. Reasons include location, such as an inner city one bedroom apartment versus a big house on several acres in a sub-division, or the amount of preps that you have: food supplies etc.
Everything depends on the situation and the threat that emerges, including your own personal and family situation and preparations. One key thing is not to make assumptions now, but to remain flexible. It is strongly advised to not to ‘head for the hills’ by reflex, because unless you have somewhere to go you will be out there with the rest of the refugees in the chaos. If you even have a minimal amount of preparations at home you should shelter in place and make do the best you can. This should be a low profile shelter in place where you set yourself up to draw minimum attention to yourself as the waves of chaos pass. You may be sheltering in a basement with your family, for example.
Of course, if the threat changes, then you will need to adapt to it. An organized gang of well-armed marauders going house to house in your neighborhood would be an example of when to make the decision to bug out. Be flexible and don’t go the opposite of the ‘head for the hills’ mentality and die in your basement simply because you did not want to pack up and go. However, it is almost a given that for anyone sheltering with supplies in this way there will at some point come one or more challenges such as home invasion from outside groups. This will also probably apply to those in rural retreats at some point as the horde fans out looking to survive. Be ready to respond and defend yourself against these challenges as necessary. Think of how it will likely be after the event, not how things are right now. Those in the rural retreats will probably have a rude awakening when they realize that the horde has reached them and the demographics have changed!
There are two main things that you have to achieve, phases if you like, in order to survive in the long term:
1) Have enough stores, firearms, tactical ability and numbers if possible, as well as a covert location in order to survive the event and the initial chaos and disorder. This is a short to medium term goal.
2) Long term, you will need to be able to live in a protected sustainable community. All prepper’s stores will run out in the end and the only solution to survive and thrive is to be able to produce food and protect your people and your resources.
So, unless you started in a sustainable protected retreat, you will have to survive where you are until such time as you can get to one. Remember that in a full TEOTWAWKI scenario there will be mass panic and chaos as people try to find food and survive. There will be a huge population die-off and there will likely be a delay of a year or two before food can be produced. You have to survive from the one to the other. Even after the die–off there will still be good and bad guys out there. Good guys probably living in those sustainable retreats or locations, bad guys marauding and living off what they can loot and pillage. There may be other complicating factors, such as civil war or foreign invasion.
So, if you survived the event and were not already in that ideal retreat, you then have to move. Did you hide and protect your bug out vehicle with a supply of stored gas? Are you going to have to walk, or use other modes of transport? The key thing is that your group will have to make it to somewhere where they can be accepted by a current sustainable community, or move onto land where they can create one. This will involve travel of some sort and also the ability to defend your group while moving from A to B.
If it is true TEOTWAWKI, then it could go on for years and you may have to travel to establish a farm somewhere. If you are going to be taken in by a community or small town that is sustaining itself, then you have to show your worth in some way. This can also become relevant to those who find themselves in the ‘gold standard’ prepper retreat location, because some of the factors may change to make that position no longer tenable.
So, at some point it may be relevant to all that they will have to move in vehicles in a post collapse environment. If you have to conduct vehicle movement then you will need to assume an extant threat. Such a threat will take the form, in simple terms, of armed groups and individuals who will seek to impinge on you and your family’s freedom, property or life for their own ends. There could be road blocks, ambush, mobs, tricks and all sorts of threats.
You will also have to consider the extent that any law enforcement remains active, which could also include emergency or martial law. For example, if you are moving you will have to assess the situations as they appear and decide whether you are facing a legal checkpoint (i.e. military/law enforcement) versus perhaps an illegal roadblock with bad intent versus perhaps an ‘illegal’ one with simply defensive intent, such as one set up by a community militia to defend a town. Therefore, you will need to consider the adoption of defensive tactics and capabilities in order to mitigate against the threat.
Please put out of your mind any assumptions that you may have already about how you will move in this kind of environment. This is not about advocating the use of children as ‘shooters’, the open display of weapons out of car windows, or even the positioning of a ‘shooter’ in a sunroof. In short, this is not about going ‘Mad Max’. You will need to consider the ‘profile’ that you adopt, which means how your vehicle packet appears as you are moving along the roads and at halts, and will also have implications for the professionalism that you display.
You can adopt either a ‘high’ or ‘low’ profile (or posture) and in this situation, as a family or group of civilians moving in a potentially hostile post collapse environment, it is likely best to adopt the lower end of the profile scale. This does not impact your defensive capability, but granted it could be said you make you a more inviting target if you look ‘softer’. However, you do not want to incite action against you by hostiles and there may well still be elements of military or law enforcement working out there and you don’t want to find yourself arrested or engaged by these elements because you yourselves are seen as a lawless threat. This is not a discussion about creating tactical teams or quick reaction forces, which will be useful in other circumstances and comes later in this book; it is more about mitigating risk to a family or friends group moving cross country.
Consider how you can maintain a defensive capability while also presenting a low profile. For example, consider your vehicles. Families often have minivans. These are not seen as cool or tactical at all, but if you put the seats down in the back you have a huge cargo space. Loading this with supplies would allow you to carry them while not making it look so obvious, less obvious than loading a pick-up or a trailer for example.
Wear your load/ammunition carrying equipment in a way that is comfortable for sitting in a vehicle but less obvious – perhaps putting a shirt over top of a load carrying vest, and keeping weapons down but accessible. If you have to get out and stand by your vehicle you can do so with your weapon in a ready position, but you can also leave it on the seat next to you and readily available, depending on the situation and the profile you wish to portray. Consider these things.
Remember that your vehicle gives you no protection. The only ‘hardened’ areas in a normal civilian vehicle are the engine block and the metal parts of the wheels. This is why if you are taking fire position next to a vehicle, you want to shelter by the engine or wheel wells; prefera
bly you will then move away from the vehicle into a fire position in hard cover. You should consider how you may be able to change this by creating better ballistic protection in the vehicles.
As you are moving, the driver’s job is to drive and he should preferably be capable as a ‘shooter’ but primarily the vehicle is his ‘weapon’ and the means to keep people safe. The other ‘shooters’ will be assigned observation sectors of responsibility as they move along the route. You should adopt a safe tactical speed that will give you warning of any dangers ahead and hopefully allow you to avoid them. Your primary focus should be on safety and the avoidance of danger.
Invest time in route planning. Don’t be afraid to stop and move forward on foot to observe the route ahead, or turn around and go another way. Make sure you adopt the tactical bounds between vehicles and if you stop for any reason, such as to change a tire, fill up gas from your stored gas cans, or even for the night, you need to adopt a good tactical position and cover your sectors to protect the convoy. For longer term halts, such as overnight, conceal the vehicles off the road and post sentries.
As you move, you will need to have any music off and consider having the windows open in unarmored vehicles in rural areas in order to be able to hear and get a better feel for the environment, particularly if you stop for any reason. But if you are anywhere where there is the potential for people or mobs then you need to have the doors locked and the windows up to reduce the risk of entry and even people getting snatched from vehicles.
If you are driving and you come under enemy fire (’contact’) then you are in the enemy ‘killing area’ also known as the ‘X’ and the key thing is to get off the X as rapidly as possible. You may take casualties but you still need to get out of there and consolidate at a secured rally point. This is where any added ballistic protection will be priceless. A problem you may have is if you have a vehicle(s) immobilized by enemy fire on the X.
These situations and the counter drills are covered in detail in this chapter. Briefly, you have to get the personnel off the X and this can either be with a rescue vehicle moving back into the killing area under cover fire and ‘cross decking’ the personnel, or alternatively the personnel in the immobilized vehicle(s) will have to fire and move off the X to rejoin the group under covering fire.
You will want to consider whether you are moving by day or by night. The situation will dictate but in general if you don’t have night vision equipment for driving, which means driving with headlights, then you should move during the day. This will allow you to scan and observe and your movement will also be less obvious without your headlights as it would be at night. You will need to give consideration to the threats you may encounter and drill your team accordingly. You may have to respond to roadside ambush, and this may be with the road open or blocked and with your vehicles perhaps becoming immobilized or receiving casualties. You will also have to work out how you will respond to roadblocks, both legal and illegal and what you will do if you observe them early of if you drive into one without prior warning.
It is important that your practice these ‘actions on’ drills so that you will be able to respond in a crisis. You should even practice ‘cross decking’ and getting the kids out of the vehicles in an emergency, so that they know what to expect and are not surprised when you start giving them commands to ‘get down’ or get out of the vehicles. You can train this kind of muscle memory drill in the same way that kids do fire drills and ‘stop drop and roll’ at school.
If you do find yourself in a position where it is the protected vehicle that is immobilized and under fire, then there needs to be at least on adult acting as the protection person and directing the protected personnel to stay low and crawl, while the other spouse or team members provide covering fire. You should be able to identify what hard cover is (cover from fire, not just view) and also what is ‘dead ground’, which is ground that the enemy cannot see into i.e. folds in the ground and ditches etc. This will allow the protection person to identify areas where they may keep the kids while waiting for a rescue vehicle, or alternatively allow them to crawl out of the killing area in cover while others in the team fire and move.
The more vehicles and team members you have in your group, the more potential there is for covering fire from the flanks of the killing area, and the more people available to fire and move and also carry any casualties. The reality of a family or group of families or friends on the move is that there will be a mix of the tactically able, the young and the old and infirm.
Vehicle Movement Basics
i.e. some things to think about:
Threat mitigation: AVOID, AVOID, AVOID: How to? Stay put? In the long run, it may be riskier to stay put, so you may have to move to an alternative location. Think about advance planning, route selection: use back roads avoiding lines of drift and traffic. Timing: go at the right time, either early in the crisis when you first get alerted, or if you don't you may have missed the window when the roads were not clogged, so you may have to wait until the panic has subsided. Avoid panicked mobs on the main routes but certainly avoid too much of an area where there may be local militias or other types of threats where they may want to want to take your liberty or your property.
Move at a slow steady speed on selected back roads, maybe around 40 mph or slower; use slow speeds appropriate to the roads and the visibility. Make your speed such that you don't get surprised going round a bend. If necessary, stop short and conduct surveillance on the route ahead, even if that means getting out of the vehicles and moving up to an observation point. Utilize stand-off and observation. If necessary turn around and go another way. Primarily: AVOID.
Trailers can impact the ability to perform maneuvers, such as reversing under contact. AVOID situations where you have to do this, and consider not having a trailer if you don't have to; but you may need it for long term survival to carry gear and supplies. Consider kids car seats: these will keep them safe from a crash but sitting right up there strapped in during a contact? If you come under contact, anyone not operating a weapon, any children and elderly or sick non-combatants, should be down in the foot well taking cover. Consider having your kids in adult seat belts or free in the car but able to be placed into the foot well and also rapidly dragged out of the car as necessary. This therefore is another factor that implies not speeding along and therefore taking a steady approach to the movement.
A note on seat belts: in the early days in Iraq, it was considered the thing not to use seat belts. However, casualties were caused due to:
1) Road traffic accidents caused by roadside IEDs, which would otherwise be survivable except for the crash and
2) High speeds used as vehicles sped along trying to avoid ambush.
Later, it was considered safe to be strapped in and undo the seat belt if you needed to get out. Consider this with children and car seats: which is safer? So consider up-armoring the sides of the vehicle, even temporarily, where your children sit. Kids can't generally wear body armor, but if you have spare sets then prop it up in the doors next to where the kids are sitting. Or do the same with any other protective material, such as steel plates. Consider protection from enemy small arms fire coming from the roadside.
You can purchase ‘ballistic blankets’ which are close protection equipment to rapidly throw over someone if shooting starts. They are just soft armor without plates, therefore not protection against high velocity rounds, but they would have utility to place along the sides of a vehicle where the passengers sit. You could use something like ballistic blankets or steel plate materials to create a protected area inside a vehicle, even a steel open-topped box in the back of a mini-van. The challenge if doing that is to allow access to rapidly get the passengers out, which means having access doors or panels into the box.
If you were to create such a box, you would place all the seats down or remove them in the back, and then put the kids on the floor, possibly lashing down kids car seats to the floor of the vehicle. It is also impo
rtant to note, on the subject of lashing stuff down, that all loose equipment inside a vehicle must be lashed down with ratchet straps to strong points. This is so, in case of a crash or rollover, the occupants do not get injured by such equipment flying around. All items such as jacks, ammo cans or other heavy stuff needs to be tied down.
The more team members, shooters and vehicles you have, the better. A tactic to use if you consider you are approaching a danger point, such as a potential ambush site, and you can't go another route to avoid it, is to use bounding over-watch with your vehicles. You have to have more than one vehicle to do this, preferably three. If a single family unit, consider using the second family car. Wife, kids and trailer on the rear vehicle, husband up front in the other - that is worst case.
Utilize a ‘tactical bound’ between vehicles - a distance that depends on the ground but means that one element will not be suppressed by the same effective fire as the other unit. The husband up front can stop short, scan the area and reverse out as necessary, in a recon function. The second car does not pull up behind, but maintains the tactical bound. If you were moving in one vehicle, maybe two, but you had protected personnel in all vehicles and no other way around the potential ambush site, your options are limited.
If you really had to go through then you could consider loading one of the vehicles with shooter personnel only and send it through, covered by other shooters. Alternatively you could send a dismounted team, even if it is only two people, to skirmish through with bounding over-watch and clear the areas of cover to the flank where you think the likely ambush will be. They can be covered by other people back at the road, with the protected vehicles and personnel pushed back into dead ground. If they make contact with enemy, they will simply break contact and fire and maneuver back to the main body and everyone will mount up and move out.