Given all that, for group use, it would be exceptionally handy if all members had the same type and caliber of firearms – say, for example, Ruger 9 mm semi-auto handguns, Colt AR-15 rifles, and Browning 12-gauge shotguns (I’m not suggesting these brands or calibers, just using them for example). If everyone in your group had the same firearms, it is easy for someone in a threatening situation to grab a colleague’s weapon and handle it competently – because it is exactly the same as what they have themselves trained with and became familiar with. Plus ammo can be readily found, since everyone in the group will have the same kinds. Those are real tactical advantages. Even so, any firearms are better than no firearms. Just try to avoid exotic makes and calibers.
Ideally, your group would also have two or three people who are interested in and good at repairing weaponry. These “armorers” are the folk who keep your firearms in good condition and can fix problems as they come up. Check local gunsmiths for information on learning the trade – offer to help them out in exchange for instruction; ask about local schools or online programs. Lacking armorers, your group should keep extra firearms on hand for the day when someone’s breaks. Be sure to keep cleaning kits and supplies, as well.
Alternative Weapons
Alternatively, hunting bows and crossbows, as well as longbows, are handy, quiet, and deadly accurate tools. They are typically used at moderate distances (say, 50 yards), and the “ammo” can be reused multiple times. The main drawback is that you can only fire one arrow at a time, and it takes several seconds to reload. Plus, they do require significant practice time to get good at shooting accurately. These are nice to have as backup armaments to regular firearms – just buy lots of extra strings, arrow shafts, and hunting arrow heads. If things have devolved so much that you hesitate to hunt for fear of disclosing your location, there isn’t anything better than a good silent crossbow for bringing home the game.
Everyone in your group should have at least one good utility knife, such as a pocket knife and a larger hunting-type knife for hacking and chopping. My preferred brand are Mora Knives, made in Finland – they are produced from carbon steel and take a sharp edge easily, plus they are very inexpensive when compared to other knives. You may have seen Mora fish fillet knives at the hunting/fishing departments of box stores; these are excellent. Carbon steel needs to be washed and dried immediately after use, or the blades rust. Stainless steel knives hold their edges longer and don’t rust, but are much harder to bring to a fine edge than carbon steel. Get lots and lots of extra knives, because you will use them constantly.
Finally, although Papa Ragnar didn’t write extensively on it to my knowledge, there’s the option of returning to blackpowder firearms. These can be acquired new without registration or license right now in most areas, and have the same capabilities as standard firearms – with some caveats: you have exactly one shot, and it takes a while to reload. If you’re handy with chemicals, ingredient lists, and can follow directions, you can make the gunpowder for it, or buy lots of extra powder while it is still available. Additionally, you can cast the bullets from leftover metals – some practitioners use fishing sinkers, melt them, and pour into forms that are also readily available right now. For the Hang-on phase, blackpowder might be a very viable option
Never point your weapon at anything you don’t intend to destroy.
Treat all weapons as if they are loaded.
Training
The people who act as your primary defensive unit will function most efficiently if they have consistent behaviors to resort to when under duress – basically, each participant must know what everyone else will do if “X” event happens. That awareness comes from training.
For example, say that the OP nearest your front entry gate sends out a radio alert that there are several individuals sneaking around the fence line. Because the team has trained together, each member knows that this alert signals the camera operators to turn on cameras outside the property and monitor for other suspicious behavior. Instead of other team members rushing from their posts to the front gate, they increase their own OP monitoring – the lurkers could be a distraction effort to open up another entry way onto your land.
No one needs to say what they are doing, because every team member knows what is happening. The alert from the front gate OP set off a chain of responses among team members. Since they don’t have to talk on the radio about what they’re doing, anyone outside the property who might be listening in to radio comms to find out how the group reacts to threats, won’t get any useful information.
This is but one small part of the entire training spectrum that your people must know in order to defend your ground. Skills with defensive firearms is also a large element with practice in stationary marksmanship, shooting while moving, and utilization of cover. By far the most accessible information you can find on these topics is in the book A Failure of Civility (AFOC). Here are just a few points – but don’t think you understand this broad topic, until you have read, studied, and internalized AFOC and other books on “home defense”:
Be proactive – make plans before you need them.
Lock down and control all entry and exit points.
The Center of Operations (Command Post) needs to be on top of all events and outside sources of information (other people talking on radios, HAMs, public info sources, police bands, etc.).
Have a group identifier, armbands on both arms which are hard for outsiders to duplicate (AFOC suggests fabric from household curtains, for example).
Wear camouflage appropriate to the season and region.
OP sites are manned 24/7, no more than two hours per person per shift.
Interior monitoring patrols, at intermittent and unscheduled times.
Marksmen with overlapping fields of fire, plus ones set up outside the property line.
Fall back positions within your property boundaries.
Development of “fatal funnels” to lead intruders into firing zones.
Reinforce inside perimeters with barbed wire and concertina wire.
Concealed high position viewing and marksman sites in attics, high trees, well concealed hillsides, etc.
Emergency bug-out procedures, BOB always packed and ready to go.
Emergency relocation plans, training, practice.
Matt Bracken makes excellent points about the importance of “night training”, practicing moving around your property and it’s features at night, becoming familiar with the terrain, and discovering the differences in day versus night lighting, sound, and movement. This should be printed and practiced.
Night Fighting 101
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/bracken-night-fighting-101/
Firing Positions and Fatal Funnel
These are important basic concepts for defense, so I will touch on them here. When your OPs are set up, the ideal is to have fields of fire – that is, directions in which the people in the OP can shoot – that overlap with another OP. The overlap – such as an X-shaped field, with the target in the center of the X – gives your group better access to the target, and fewer means for the targets to hide from the shots. Ideally, again, each OP would have a specific area over which they can shoot – say, a 45-degree view of an entrance road. The edges of their field may be marked with a touch of paint or bit of fabric, so that the excitement of the moment is less likely to have your group firing wildly. Limited and overlapping fields of fire helps prevent “friendly fire” accidents, and keeps the focus on your targets.
A fatal funnel is any means that directs would-be interlopers into an area that is difficult to leave, where they are centered in the fields of fire. For instance, wrecked cars “stalled” so that intruders must slow down to travel around them or stop at a roadway blockage, might constitute a fatal funnel – particularly if on a cliff or riverside that gives no easy cover or means of escape. A “game trail” path that “sneaks” into your property might lead around a couple bends into a deadend canyon or dire
ctly into the field of fire of a concealed and covered OP, creating a fatal funnel for intruders.
When you are out after things have turned ugly in society, be conscious of your own potential escape routes – at the post office, in movie theaters, at the supermarket or mall. Even when stopped in traffic. Make a point of leaving a full car length between you and the car in front at all stoplights, and be in either the right or left hand lanes – so you can turn quickly and hit the gas if something goes strange. Being stuck in traffic with no way to get out is the worst kind of fatal funnel, and one that we can see taking place all over the nation every day.
Subterfuge
Sun Tzu (ca 500 BC), the Chinese general and philosopher, wrote:
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far; when far away, we must make him believe we are nearby.”
Survival in extreme social circumstances is also based on convincing unpleasant people that there's nothing to see here, move on. Or that there might be something here, but there no way to be sure and it's going to be too much trouble to find out. This reduces your target value and improves your resilience and security.
There's many ways to do this, all reliant on your own creativity and understanding of human nature. Effectively, ask yourself what would discourage you from checking out any location. Does it look ransacked, like the good stuff is gone already? Does it look risky or dangerous? Does it smell bad? Are there strange sounds? Create those experiences in anyone who views your property.
Years ago, I read an article about wealthy people living in large cities. A number of them had taken a remarkable step: they bought run down empty industrial warehouses near the downtown areas. They had the buildings gutted, and the interiors refitted with the fancy construction they wanted: indoor pools and spas, game rooms, multi-level cathedral ceilings, bowling alleys, sun rooms and grow spaces, huge fireplaces, gourmet kitchens, large theater and dance halls, whatever they imagined. Outside, the buildings still looked scroungy and worn out, with just a chain-link fence and industrial guard shack keeping out trespassers – with a near-invisible high tech security system watching the surroundings as well. Passersby had no idea that inside that shabby old structure was an actual palace.
I believe it was either Selco (https://shtfschool.com) a survivor of the Bosnian war, or Ferfal (http://tspwiki.com/index. php?title=Fernando_%22Ferfal%22_Aguirre) survivor of the Argentine financial collapse, who reported another interesting example. One resident of a town during the calamity went out and dragged dead human bodies – casualties, murdered people, diseased -- in front of his property. Then he posted a sign that read something like, “Mess with me, and this happens to you.” The story was that nobody bothered that house or family.
Signs can tell a story and discourage intrusion:
Quarantine
Police “do not cross, crime scene” tape
Biohazard: chemical spill
Biohazard: medical waste
Danger: radiation
On a truck: “Septic Cleaning” or “Manure Spreading”
Notice that none of the preceding signs indicates that there's anybody home – just that the site is dangerous in some way. Compare that to these:
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Keep out. Private property.
Nothing here is worth your life.
You are here (showing a view from a rifle scope with cross hairs)
Looters will be shot.
As entertaining as these can be, every one of them screams, “Good stuff here, armed, use a sneak attack.”
Any residence or business that looks like it's been ransacked has a reduced chance of being entered by intruders – not a zero chance, but a reduced chance. Dump trash in the yard, weeds growing everywhere, break a couple windows, pull curtains out to blow in the breeze, spray paint flat black above windows and doors to look like soot suggesting the place has been on fire.
Consider decoy residences that look like someone is there – perhaps a small green garden patch in the front. Site a viewing post so that you can watch the place. Intruders can then be managed from a safe distance.
Use your good sense. No one in their right mind wants to face a firefight or harm another human being.
Even Sun Tzu knew that:
The supreme Art of War is to get the better of the enemy
without fighting.
Forced Off Your Land
Fire, incursions by raiders, avalanche, landslide, onerous taxes, repressive regime, weather becoming unlivable – there may be unanticipated events that compel you and yours to leave the home and land you have developed for the cold times. The reason for having to leave will dictate how you leave, as well as what you plan for your group’s future. There are two basic conditions with many variations, of course: Running away; and Moving on.
Running Away
During WWII, a middle European farm family at the edge of the fighting heard cannon fire approaching – they knew it was only a matter of time. The father told his teenage and adult children to milk the cows, put the milk in portable containers – then, slaughter the cows, and pack the meat. While that was going on, he harnessed the horses and prepared their wagons, gathered some basics and farm tools as sharp potential weapons, loaded coats and blankets, and drove the wagon to collect the family. They evacuated, and survived.
In many ways, that old farmer’s response was brilliant – as hard and painful as it must have been to kill the animals that had been their life and lifestyle, and to leave their farm without looking back. He not only provided food for his family, he deprived the invaders of food as well. I don’t recall whatever location they headed off to – apparently it was good enough, since one of the young daughters lived to tell it in her old age – but, given the old farmer’s strategic decisions, I suspect he had a destination in mind already. Obviously, it was a safe one.
The primary survival strategy of a fast-getaway is having a place to get away to. That means planning, mapping, and forming alliances who won’t be surprised if you show up at midnight, with your family and worldly goods in a wagon. The go-to place should be decided in advance, with all the critical details worked out well ahead of any possibility of need.
Depending on how far you’d have to travel, placing food, water, and security “caches” along the way will make your escape significantly safer than doing without. A cache (pronounced: cash) is a collection of items you might want or need, usually placed in a hidden spot such as buried, in a cave or outcropping, or in a collapsed building. A cache can contain pretty much anything you might think of – boots, blankets, knives, ammo, freeze dried food, bottled water, and so forth – that could assist you if you had to leave quickly or without your usual supplies. You’ll need to mark your cache location in a way that stands out to you but doesn’t scream “it’s here!” to everyone else. Bent or broken branches might be one way. Or a landmark, such as “two large trees east of the broken oak” could be used.
If you’re on foot, a cache every ten miles would be about right. If you are riding a horse, every twenty miles or so would give a day’s travel between caches. If you are driving and roads are good, space them a tankful of gas apart.
Then, if you “hear the cannons”, or maybe if you even think the cannons might be heading your way, you move.
Moving On
During the Maunder Minimum, farmers in Switzerland reported glacier ice descending onto their land at the rate of 150 feet in a day. That means, in the course of a week, a wall of ice might cover over 1000 feet – in 5 weeks, it would be covering more than a mile of land.
Hopefully, you’ve sited your location below the edges of past glaciations, below 40o latitude, and never have to see those kinds of effects in person. Having three or four bad crop years might be a reason to seek a warmer climate, or if rivers rise so much that y
ou become an islander for part of the year, or if the area you’re in becomes too droughty, or chaotic and unsafe – perhaps, then, it’s time to move on.
In these scenarios, there are a few concepts that apply to both:
The time of day/night and season will need to be considered – summers may be too overly hot to spend time in the sun; winter blizzards will impede any movement outdoors.
Number of people involved – whether it’s dozens of adults and newborn babies, or merely a lone married couple -- will affect equipment, ability to move quickly, and transportation.
Distance and time away from your property – short temporary trips versus long or permanent ones. If you expect to have something to come back to, you’ll need someone to watch or take care of the place.
Available transportation methods: vehicles, their ability to make the drive, fuel, tires, and your capacity to make impromptu repairs will affect how quickly and how far you can go. Extra gas or diesel may be needed, along with extra spare tires, “flat-fix”, tire plugs, or other means of repairing damaged tires
Would you plan to move on horseback or with horse-drawn equipment? If so, make sure you have sturdy working horses that will pull and ride, plus the kinds of tools needed to make repairs to bridles, harnesses, and wagons.
If your vehicles breaks down or the roads become impassable, make sure you have backups – bicycles or motorized trailbikes, plus good pairs of hiking boots might be your best option.
Cold Times — How to Prepare for the Mini Ice Age Page 36